Arch Linux

tyler

Member

From: Montreal

Registered: 2004-06-05

Posts: 35

memory hungry linux

when my system had 512M of ram, linux (with gnome as a desktop) used about 98% of it (top tells me the used part was 500M). so i ugrade, i buy another stick of 512. now top shows a use of 1000M. what the hell is taking all that memory? and why is it that every new stick of RAM i put in is invaded? in windows XP, my memory usage is a constant 200-300M. is top buggy?

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Till human voices wake us, and we drown. -Eliot

topito

Member

From: Catalonia

Registered: 2004-03-25

Posts: 118

Website

Re: memory hungry linux

Cos linux caches all memory, and that's soooo good. Don't worry, one of the best features of the kernel is the fantastic memory management.

dp

Member

From: Zürich, Switzerland

Registered: 2003-05-27

Posts: 3,378

Website

Re: memory hungry linux

topito is right, but additionally i must tell, that gnome is not that economic with memory-usage than e.g. xfce4 or fluxbox or something else more lightwight (that do not come with huge libs++)

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The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed.

xerxes2

Member

From: Malmoe, Sweden

Registered: 2004-04-23

Posts: 1,249

Website

Re: memory hungry linux

My top don't show that all memory is used! I know that Linux cache memory but not 98% all the time, does it?

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arch + gentoo + initng + python = enlisy

dp

Member

From: Zürich, Switzerland

Registered: 2003-05-27

Posts: 3,378

Website

Re: memory hungry linux

a working machine can have something like this to be normal:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        773548     709080      64468          0     121804     197044
-/+ buffers/cache:     390232     383316
Swap:       824032         32     824000

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The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed.

xerxes2

Member

From: Malmoe, Sweden

Registered: 2004-04-23

Posts: 1,249

Website

Re: memory hungry linux

Yeah, that is right dp. Wrong of me. I must have been thinking of some other program.

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arch + gentoo + initng + python = enlisy

tyler

Member

From: Montreal

Registered: 2004-06-05

Posts: 35

Re: memory hungry linux

ok, i understand. so i guess this is normal :

Mem:   1033632k total,  1000600k used,    33032k free,   106088k buffers
Swap:   265064k total,        8k used,   265056k free,   618108k cached

but look at this, firefox is a memory gluton (just one browser window open):

PID   USER     PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND       
5087 david     15   0 53376  36m  31m S  0.0  3.6   1:24.92 firefox-bin 
5088 david     16   0 53376  36m  31m S  0.0  3.6   0:00.00 firefox-bin 
5089 david     16   0 53376  36m  31m S  0.0  3.6   0:00.22 firefox-bin 
5091 david     15   0 53376  36m  31m S  0.0  3.6   0:00.66 firefox-bin

why four? i don't know.
i like XFCE4, i might just switch.

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Till human voices wake us, and we drown. -Eliot

leejpar

Member

From: Texas, USA

Registered: 2004-05-28

Posts: 51

Website

Re: memory hungry linux

I have seen more windows like memory usage in linux with the new 2.6.6 kernel. For example, my Arch 2.6.6 box is using 176MB of 248MB total, swap use is at 12K of 1GB right now! On my Fedora 2.4.22 kernel box, I usually run at 240MB of 248MB total, plus about 200MB of swap space. So, my conclusion is that the 2.6 kernel is better at memory management than 2.4. At least, that is my experience!

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Linux Registered User #337161
'It's free. It works. Duh.'" - Eric Harrison

tyler

Member

From: Montreal

Registered: 2004-06-05

Posts: 35

Re: memory hungry linux

i am using 2.6. i wonder. it doesn't seem to slow down my system, linux is as, if not more, responsive than windows. so, who cares what it's doing with all that memory, as long as it manages the whole thing well.

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Till human voices wake us, and we drown. -Eliot

kakabaratruskia

Member

From: Santiago, Chile

Registered: 2003-08-24

Posts: 596

Re: memory hungry linux

Cos linux caches all memory, and that's soooo good. Don't worry, one of the best features of the kernel is the fantastic memory management.

Why is it supposed to be good caching memory?...I've never got it.

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And where were all the sportsmen who always pulled you though?
They're all resting down in Cornwall
writing up their memoirs for a paper-back edition
of the Boy Scout Manual.

Xentac

Forum Fellow

From: Victoria, BC

Registered: 2003-01-17

Posts: 1,797

Website

Re: memory hungry linux

Cos linux caches all memory, and that's soooo good. Don't worry, one of the best features of the kernel is the fantastic memory management.

Why is it supposed to be good caching memory?...I've never got it.

It's not caching memory... it's cache hard disk accesses in memory.  Because updates to memory are much faster than updates to the disk.

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I have discovered that all of mans unhappiness derives from only one source, not being able to sit quietly in a room
- Blaise Pascal

skoal

Member

From: Frequent Flyer Underworld

Registered: 2004-03-23

Posts: 612

Website

Re: memory hungry linux

...what the hell is taking all that memory?...

One word..."tmpfs"

I agree with what most have posted already, but even when I was using Gnome, I didn't have these "memory problems" after removing the "tmpfs" filesystem usage.

You can check out my posted results at this thread:

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … ght=#21751

and you can see the difference in "memory usage" it made for me when I removed "tmpfs" while still running Gnome.