Hi, on my 4GB RAM machine, top says
"Memory: Real: 1293M/3786M act/tot Free: 158M Cache: 2079M Swap:
449M/10G"
All the five first columns vary over time, in particular the first four.
3786 + 158 = 3944 is fairly close to 4GB so I guess that's the amount of
RAM that the BIOS (+HW drivers?) actually left usable, so that number
makes sense.
The 158 number is fairly clear also - that's all the RAM that's not in
use.
And the 2079 number should be the total amount of filesystem cache.
But then what are the first two numbers, and there in particular the
second one??
I guess the first one is the total amount of malloc():s (I guess
including the actual malloc structures).
But the second one makes no sense - 1293 (first column) + 2079 (fourth
column) make 3372 so this number does not only cover malloc:s and the FS
cache then, but there are 414MB of other stuff. Is it that the kernel
with all of its work takes 414MB?? If so that's weird because really the
machine doesn't do a lot.
The "man" page doesn't say any of this.
I think it's good to know this, for diagnostic purposes.
Anyone knows what the second column is for?
Thanks,
Tinker
