--6TrnltStXW4iwmi0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Good day to all,

Hate to bother the list with such a newbie question, but searching
the 'net on this turned up nothing.

In my `top' list, I see (among others) this:
  PID USERNAME PRI NICE   SIZE   RES STATE      TIME   WCPU    CPU COMMAND
    9 root      10    0     0K   61M apmev      5:20  0.00%  0.00% [apm0]

(the exact same SIZE/RES values for all other system processes)

My question is this: What, exactly, does the RES column display?  The
manpages are babbling about resident memory, but that doesn't really
mean anything to me.

If I understood some of the descriptions on the 'net, RES is the memory
the process is actually using, and SIZE the memory reserved for the
process.  This sounds odd, since the usage is more than the reserved memory?

Why are all system processes the same size?  Why 61 Mb?  That sounds
like a lot, and IIRC NetBSD runs on small systems with as little as 16 Mb
of RAM.

Who's got a cluebat for me?

Regards,
Peter
--=20
http://www.student.kun.nl/peter.bex
--
"The process of preparing programs for a digital computer
 is especially attractive, not only because it can be economically
 and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic
 experience much like composing poetry or music."
							-- Donald Knuth

--6TrnltStXW4iwmi0
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Disposition: inline

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (NetBSD)

iD8DBQFA5HhMLg33BXzVMqsRAlpzAKCxFsFxiNx0mEdLmU+CHjsIgPAiZwCeK74I
IKxbWrALE5U3G3ZT5/PhC3Q=
=phEM
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--6TrnltStXW4iwmi0--