On Wed, 2006-Jul-26 11:26:34 +0200, Stephane Dupille wrote: > As time passing by, the memory fills up. When the machine starts, >memory is occupied to 30 %, and after two or three weeks memory is >occupied to 100 % and it begins to use swap.
How are you monitoring memory usage? Do you mean 'swap' or 'page'? A level of page-in's is normal because text and data areas for processes are loaded by paging them in. > I was not able to find a correct definition of what "inactive" >memory is. First, I would like to know what are these kind of pages : >wired, active, inactive, cache and free. Wired pages are pages that the kernel has wired to RAM so they cannot be paged out. Active pages are being mapped by virtual memory and in use by running processes. Inactive pages are not currently mapped but the kernel knows their contents and can re-map them without needing to retrieve them from disk - they may be dirty. Cache pages are similar to active pages but aren't dirty and are higher-priority candidates for being freed. Free pages have no useful content and will be used to fulfil page-in requests. > Is that normal that inactive memory usage grows ? Yes. 'Free' memory is basically wasted and so the kernel tries to limit it, subject to having sufficient free memory to meet page-faults. Most of your RAM should be wired, active or inactive. Inactive memory will start at 0 and grow as active pages are released. > What should I do ? Nothing. Why do you think you have a problem? > Do you have any tools to monitor memory usage of processes ? ps(1) -- Peter Jeremy
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