slow machine, swap in use, but more than 5GB of RAM inactive

[Erich Dollansky]

Hi,

I wonder about the slow speed of my machine while top shows ample
inactive memory:

last pid: 85287;  load averages:  2.56,  2.44, 1.68 
up 6+10:24:45 10:13:36 191 processes: 5 running, 186 sleeping 
CPU 0: 47.1% user,  0.0% nice, 51.4% system, 0.0% interrupt,  1.6% idle 
CPU 1: 38.4% user,  0.0% nice, 60.4% system,  0.0% interrupt, 1.2% idle 
CPU 2: 38.8% user,  0.0% nice, 59.2% system,  0.0% interrupt, 2.0% idle 
CPU 3: 45.5% user,  0.0% nice, 51.0% system,  0.4% interrupt, 3.1% idle 
Mem: 677M Active, 5600M Inact, 1083M Wired, 178M Cache, 816M Buf,301M
Free 
Swap: 16G Total, 1352M Used, 15G Free, 8% Inuse

The swap space in use can be explained by large compilations done
recently. Why is the inactive memory not put to use.

I do not want to restart the machine. So, if I could help find the
source of the problem, I would do.

Erich