top command output -- memory usage

[ezhilarasan_1]

Hi,

In Unix top command result, the memory usage and free is not clear to me.
I have attached the top command result of memory portion for our m/c
Please explain each value in this.
What is the figures in bracket and not in bracket ?
What is the last column value ( in this case 5465404K ) ?

Memory: 1430732K (811932K) real, 1511896K (1041452K) virtual, 5465404K free Page# 1/14

Thanks
R.Ezhil

[Steven E. Protter]

You might find swapinfo -tam

More useful.

real memory is RAM
Virtual memory is/includes swap

Hope that helps.

These utilties all have slightly different calculation methods, adding to confusion.

SEP

[Ken Penland_1]

Yeah, I never use the memory info in top...alot of the time it just seems plain WRONG to me...either use swapinfo or dmesg to get your memory utilization :)

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Top's memory display is not wrong but rather you need to understand what it is. Top ONLY deals with process memory; it knows (or cares) nothing about physical memory or memory used for kernel data structures --- like buffer cache.