Arch Linux

ning

Member

Registered: 2008-11-15

Posts: 27

why the memory up so quickly?

top - 17:26:22 up 55 min, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Tasks: 73 total, 1 running, 72 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 5.0%us, 3.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 92.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 509852k total, 497920k used, 11932k free, 20260k buffers
Swap: 1494004k total, 0k used, 1494004k free, 223080k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
2811 root 20 0 396m 24m 15m S 3.3 4.9 0:01.23 audacious
2648 root 19 -1 112m 38m 10m S 2.3 7.8 0:20.59 X
2756 root 20 0 242m 19m 12m S 1.0 3.9 0:01.59 gnome-terminal
2767 root 20 0 503m 91m 26m S 1.0 18.4 1:39.18 firefox
2727 root 20 0 219m 19m 12m S 0.7 3.9 0:03.15 wnck-applet
2679 root 20 0 149m 14m 9.8m S 0.3 3.0 0:02.58 metacity
2682 root 20 0 219m 17m 12m S 0.3 3.5 0:01.17 gnome-panel
2683 root 20 0 367m 26m 16m S 0.3 5.4 0:02.51 nautilus
2714 root 20 0 240m 33m 5016 S 0.3 6.7 0:01.48 gnome-screensav
1 root 20 0 3796 620 532 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.18 init
2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
6 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 events/0
7 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
8 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd/0

=
fire up My archlinux and just open the Firefox. why use so many memory?

bgc1954

Member

From: Edmonton, AB, Canada

Registered: 2006-03-14

Posts: 1,160

Re: why the memory up so quickly?

Firefox is a known memory hog.  Mine will run, doing nothing, at about 13%, but if I view any video it will jump up from there.  There are many posts on the forums about how to speed it up and the like so just search a bit and you'll find lots of posts.

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Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: why the memory up so quickly?

Oi... you must come from Windows.

Let me put this plainly: if your memory is not in use, then you wasted money buying it.

Linux tries to use as much ram as it can for buffers and cache, so as to take full advantage of your hardware. Somewhere along the way, Windows has trained people to think of used memory as bad. It's quite the opposite. RAM is far faster than disk access. Linux tries to keep as much in RAM as it can, to access again later, rather than being slow and going down to disk for things

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http://phraktured.net

bgc1954

Member

From: Edmonton, AB, Canada

Registered: 2006-03-14

Posts: 1,160

Re: why the memory up so quickly?

@phrakture: I didn't say it was a bad thing, just that firefox is known to use lots of memory and CPU for that matter.   And NO...I've loathed windows for years.

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Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz

lucke

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2004-11-30

Posts: 4,018

Re: why the memory up so quickly?

I think phrak was talking to the OP. "Free+cached+buffers" is the memory available to apps.

Last edited by lucke (2008-12-10 17:11:12)

bgc1954

Member

From: Edmonton, AB, Canada

Registered: 2006-03-14

Posts: 1,160

Re: why the memory up so quickly?

@lucke: I kinda thought so myself but thought maybe I could get a rise out of the chief.  Maybe he'd throw a car at me.

Edit: Perhaps all this xorg whining is getting to him.

Last edited by bgc1954 (2008-12-10 17:53:29)

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Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz

R00KIE

Forum Fellow

From: Between a computer and a chair

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 4,734

Re: why the memory up so quickly?

Maybe you can consider using htop, it's a lot prettier than top and I believe it will show you more information that top does.
And yes, ram is there to use linux handles this very well, caches when it cans but if its not used anymore it goes away to let your programs run, very neat.

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R00KIE
Tm90aGluZyB0byBzZWUgaGVyZSwgbW92ZSBhbG9uZy4K

ogronom

Member

From: Toronto, Canada

Registered: 2008-05-06

Posts: 123

Re: why the memory up so quickly?

It seems that you are ok.
If you feel that you are not, try use more lighter software
i.e. XFCE instead of Gnome (preserves all the functionality with almost the same eye-candy)

moljac024

Member

From: Serbia

Registered: 2008-01-29

Posts: 2,676

Re: why the memory up so quickly?

And yes, htop is much better than top

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The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.
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But if they tell you that I've lost my mind, maybe it's not gone just a little hard to find...

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: why the memory up so quickly?

I think phrak was talking to the OP. "Free+cached+buffers" is the memory available to apps.

Yeah, sorry 'bout that, my comment was directed at the original post. I hadn't seen a "where is all my memory" post in ages.

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http://phraktured.net

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: why the memory up so quickly?

I prefer to rebuild my top package with --uber-juice and --omg-optimize so that the list is updated 0.0001s faster! It makes my daily workflow of observing processes so much easier to handle...

Sorry, I couldn't resist.