Using meminfo information

[Waldher, Travis R]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rick Stevens [mailto:rstevens at internap.com] 
> Sent: Monday, July 23, 2007 1:10 PM
> To: Getting started with Red Hat Linux
> Subject: Re: Using meminfo information
> 
> On Mon, 2007-07-23 at 12:54 -0700, Waldher, Travis R wrote:
> > I am trying to determine how much memory really is in use on the 
> > system for executing commands.  Would going by "Active" be the most 
> > accurate?
> >  
> > There is 4.8GB of RAM available for processes beyond the 
> OS, of that 
> > 3.2GB are in use with 1.9GB free?
> >  
> > MemTotal:      6009532 kB
> > MemFree:        298016 kB
> > Buffers:        190068 kB
> > Cached:        4842408 kB
> > SwapCached:          0 kB
> > Active:        3256152 kB
> > Inactive:      1919492 kB
> > HighTotal:           0 kB
> > HighFree:            0 kB
> > LowTotal:      6009532 kB
> > LowFree:        298016 kB
> > SwapTotal:     8388600 kB
> > SwapFree:      8388596 kB
> > Dirty:              48 kB
> > Writeback:           0 kB
> > Mapped:         126552 kB
> > Slab:           510696 kB
> > CommitLimit:  11393364 kB
> > Committed_AS:   198068 kB
> > PageTables:       3052 kB
> > VmallocTotal: 2147483647 kB
> > VmallocUsed:      6144 kB
> > VmallocChunk: 2147477355 kB
> 
> Yes, active is really the number that's involved in programs 
> (code, BSS and heap).
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> - Rick Stevens, Principal Engineer             rstevens at internap.com -
> - VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
> -                                                                    -
> -                  Heisenberg _may_ have slept here                  -
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Is it correct to say that the sar command cannot report how much active
and inactive cache there is?  If it can, I'm not finding it - I can only
find how much is being used for the cache.  Or in sar land, is that the
same thing as active in the meminfo file?