Subject: Re: 'free' and 'top' show the wrong amount of RAM
From: Jason P. Stanford (Jason.Stanford@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Mar 02 2000 - 21:59:54 MST
Well, I believe it comes down to the fact that memory *must* be based on
powers of 2 (2^n), as it has a fixed set of 2^n bits to play with.
Whereas disk space is based on storage allocation units of 1024 bytes.
Subtle...
Robert Fout wrote:
>
> Wouldn't it seem odd to have two different definitions of MB... anyone here
> have some serious college degrees in computer science? I'm pretty sure that
> a MB is a MB is a MB (2^20 or 1024^2)
>
> Bob
> ---------------------------------------
> "The knack to flying is learning how to
> throw yourself at the ground and miss."
>
> >From "Life the Universe and Everything"
> by Douglas Adams
>
> Robert Fout
> MacOS Guru and MkLinux/Yellowdog Linux User
> rfout@damien.edu
> http://osx.damien.edu/rfout/
> ICQ# 48433406
>
> > From: "Jason P. Stanford" <Jason.Stanford@pobox.com>
> > Organization: Sayonara Lehigh!
> > Reply-To: yellowdog-general@lists.yellowdoglinux.com
> > Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 23:24:20 -0500
> > To: yellowdog-general@lists.yellowdoglinux.com
> > Subject: Re: 'free' and 'top' show the wrong amount of RAM
> >
> > A hunch:
> >
> > Memory is 2^n power and disk space is (2^n * 1024). I might be a
> > little bit off. For example, 1MB of RAM is 2^20=1,048,576 and 1MB of
> > hard drive space is 1,000 * 1024 = 1,024,000 bytes.
> >
> >
> > Roy Koch wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Good buddy I wish I knew I can't believe someone here can't answer that
> >> question?
> >>
> >> Robert Fout wrote:
> >>
> >>> okay, i know everyone is excited about 1.2 coming out, but this is just
> >>> something I'm curious about: why 'free' and 'top' show the incorrect about
> >>> of RAM being in my machine (B&W G3/400 rev. 2)
> >>>
> >>> [rfout@bigblue rfout]$ free
> >>> total used free shared buffers cached
> >>> Mem: 127312 24844 102468 16608 940 14880
> >>> -/+ buffers/cache: 9024 118288
> >>> Swap: 131096 0 131096
> >>>
> >>> I have 128 of RAM, and 128 MB of swap (the amount of swap is shown okay, but
> >>> not RAM)
> >>>
> >>> 127312/1024=124.328125
> >>>
> >>> I used RHL 6.1 a PIII/500 at school (with 64 MB of RAM) and 'free' on those
> >>> machines showed them as having ‰62 MB of RAM.
> >>>
> >>> Using
> >>>
> >>> What the heck is causing this.. is the ROM being stored in RAM... but that
> >>> wouldn't make sense on the PC?
> >>>
> >>> Bob
> >>>
> >>> ---------------------------------------
> >>> "The knack to flying is learning how to
> >>> throw yourself at the ground and miss."
> >>>
> >>>> From "Life the Universe and Everything"
> >>> by Douglas Adams
> >>>
> >>> Robert Fout
> >>> MacOS Guru and MkLinux/Yellowdog Linux User
> >>> rfout@damien.edu
> >>> http://osx.damien.edu/rfout/
> >>> ICQ# 48433406
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Sun Apr 02 2000 - 21:09:29 MDT