I have one question in general on TOP memory,

with top when i get the bellow data (at system level) , how should i read 'Used' memory (Mem: 49371432k total, 917120k used, 48454312k free, 24256k buffers). Will it consider all Unix processes consumption (RES/VIRT/SHM), if yes which memory will it consider? Once process stopped, will this count come down?

Or it is just memory considering whole system physical memory used by all active processes? including kernal persistent memory (like Shared memory created by application, kernal persistent Qs etc..) Or anything else considered here.

Also how to read the relation in data shown in "MEM:" and "SWAP:" lines of top out put.


Thanks In Advance
Anan

Really. In that case, which one would you like answered ?.

My understanding with 'Used' is, kernal shows whole physical memory in use (including kernal persistent memory allocated by application S/W)
My doubt is is this is some thing more than what i understood/assumed then what it is?

It is almost impossible to determine what memory is actually being used. We take what we are given.
The numbers in the header for top are taken from /proc/meminfo - this is what the kernel tells us, so is considered definitive. But without wading through the source code, you'll never know.
The used number is everything allocated - usually more in fact as Linux doesn't immediately move pages from the allocated to free queue when a process ends. The memory still shows as allocated even though it is free-able. If there is demand, kswapd will run through the queues reassigning pages as needed. But this is an asynchronous action.

Like I said, almost impossible to get a (correct) specific number.

Thanks for assisting.