Arch Linux

Gullible Jones

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Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

On Arch Linux (openbox + lxsession + pypanel, nitrogen for background, wicd, volwheel, and noteo in systray, xscreensaver in background):

246 MB of 494 used, not including cache.

On Debian (gnome-core + some other stuff, just Gnome running, gnome-screensaver in background):
95.8 MB of 313.9 used, not including cache.

Something is definitely fishy here, Arch should not be using that much more memory. I think something is being a memory hog. Will post more as I investigate.

Gullible Jones

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Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

Okay, according to top X is using 15 MB on Debian and 29 MB on Arch. That's a start, I think.

Odd-rationale

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Registered: 2008-02-05

Posts: 102

Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

I got xfce4, some terminals, and FireFox running.

MEM: 186/1010MB

Gullible Jones

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Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

Hmm... I wonder if the problem is my laptop.

matiit

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From: Poland

Registered: 2007-04-13

Posts: 141

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Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

Other cmpilation flags... other compilation options... That is reason

zenlord

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From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-05-24

Posts: 1,181

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Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

I have Arch32, Slim, Openbox, tint2, conky, feh and wbar starting up together with services like apache, php5 and postgresql (other than the usual services like syslog, net-profiles and whatnot), and my system only needs around 80MB right after login.

The PHP-scripts and postgres-db is very small, but it does use memory, right?

Zl.

Gullible Jones

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Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

Hmm, Quoeth top:

Mem:    505924k total,   488992k used,    16932k free,    35472k buffers

I have lxtask set to display memory used by cache as free, but it could be that lxtask is buggy. In top buffers = cache, no?

lucke

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From: Poland

Registered: 2004-11-30

Posts: 3,682

Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

There's a cached memory just below buffers in top, in the swap line. Buffers denote disk buffers. Use "free -m" and look at the second line to have a good overview of memory used by apps.

Gullible Jones

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Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           494        485          8          0         37        132
-/+ buffers/cache:        315        178
Swap:         2047          0       2047

That's with Firefox and one terminal running. Granted, Firefox is a pig, but 353 MB seems like too much to me.

Gullible Jones

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Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

Arch:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           494        424         69          0         37        125
-/+ buffers/cache:        260        233
Swap:         2047          0       2047

Debian:

total        used      free      shared      buffers    cached
Mem:     313         184       129           0                 9          73
-/+ buffers/cache: 102       211
Swap:   1908           0      1908

Debian seems to be using less per application, but caching less as well.

Last edited by Gullible Jones (2008-08-28 21:59:26)

haxit

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From: /home/haxit

Registered: 2008-03-04

Posts: 1,247

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Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

Firefox, Transmission, Pidgin, Tint, Conky, OpenBox, and other important bg apps = 165/2048

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Gullible Jones

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Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

Bizarre.

Are any of you gues using using Intel video hardware? Maybe this is a problem with xf86-video-intel...

haxit

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From: /home/haxit

Registered: 2008-03-04

Posts: 1,247

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Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

I am using NVidia

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panzer

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Registered: 2006-08-28

Posts: 15

Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

I'm using xf86-video-i810 and my mem usage is always around 500MB of 1GB available.

buddabrod

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From: Germany

Registered: 2007-02-25

Posts: 220

Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1978       1642        336          0         14        943
-/+ buffers/cache:        684       1294
Swap:            0          0          0

Kde4 and some apps running, but nothing too fancy.

I remember debian being more memory saving than arch since I did this comparison myself some months ago. KDE starts even much faster under Debian. But I like Archs config stuff and that much more and once the applications are started there is no difference in speed.

zyghom

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From: Poland/Tanzania

Registered: 2006-05-11

Posts: 429

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Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

On Arch Linux (openbox + lxsession + pypanel, nitrogen for background, wicd, volwheel, and noteo in systray, xscreensaver in background):

246 MB of 494 used, not including cache.

that is too much: on my lxde is 160, on kde3 is 180

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Zygfryd Homonto

smoon

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Registered: 2005-08-22

Posts: 468

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Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

The following is on my laptop with Intel graphics.

Right after booting, without X:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          2017         67       1950          0          0         36
-/+ buffers/cache:         30       1987
Swap:         1027          0       1027

After starting X with the following entries in my xorg.conf:

Modes "1680x1050" "1280x800"
Virtual 2960 1050

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          2017        236       1781          0          0         68
-/+ buffers/cache:        167       1850
Swap:         1027          0       1027

~ 175 MB used

After restarting X with the above Modes and Virtual entries removed from xorg.conf:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          2017        238       1779          0          0        125
-/+ buffers/cache:        111       1906
Swap:         1027          0       1027

~ 100 MB used

Looks like the intel graphics chips that are using the main memory for graphics memory are able to dynamically allocate memory as needed. I bet there's a even a setting to set this to a fixed size.

Gullible Jones: Have you checked for differences in your xorg.conf files on Arch and Debian?

Gullible Jones

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Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

Yup, moving xorg.conf reduces memory usage... It appears the main memory sink is the graphics hardware. Thanks.

kumyco

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From: somewhere

Registered: 2008-06-23

Posts: 153

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Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

i don't wana sound like an asshat, but these statistics are flawed
...
the memory usage covers all running processes
, not just a few select ones ....
and the memory usage of a particular application, e.g X depends of usage
so describing this as a problem is, i dunno ... questionable, since the 'problem' is superficial

B-Con

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From: Frisco, TX

Registered: 2007-12-17

Posts: 549

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Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

I only have memory oddities show up after protracted usage. After a cold boot, on my laptop (xf86-video-i810), with Openbox, lxpanel, conky, I use ~70MB. Usage climbs a bit as I use it, obviously, and triples once FX packs on some around the belt.

On my desktop with the above plus Deluge, Skype, and about 4 more daemons it's about 90~100 MB on boot. After running for a while, memory does seem to "disappear". Specifically, X usage, after heavy application use, will climb from 1.5% to potentially even 4% (of 2GB).

This output gives a pretty good idea of what I have running:

$ ps -e | tail -n20
 3540 tty1     00:00:00 dbus-launch
 3541 ?        00:00:00 dbus-daemon
 3549 tty1     00:00:00 openbox-session
 3551 tty1     00:00:00 openbox-session
 3553 tty1     00:00:00 openbox-session
 3555 tty1     00:00:00 openbox-session
 3559 tty1     00:01:42 lxpanel
 3560 tty1     01:27:14 conky
 3564 tty1     00:02:12 skype
 3565 tty1     00:03:08 checkgmail
 3609 tty1     00:46:03 deluge
 7851 ?        00:00:13 truecrypt
 7855 ?        00:00:00 loop0
13380 tty1     00:00:07 gconfd-2
17474 tty1     00:00:06 terminal
17478 tty1     00:00:00 gnome-pty-helpe
17479 pts/0    00:00:00 bash
17501 tty1     00:02:57 pcmanfm
25201 tty1     00:11:03 firefox
28178 pts/1    00:00:00 bash

Here's mem use:

$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          2026       1972         54          0         91       1533
-/+ buffers/cache:        347       1679
Swap:            0          0          0

My uptime is about a day, and I've been doing some very heavy torrenting, browsing, and a file moving (between drives), hence my memory cache is filled. But minus the cache, I seem to idle around 350 MB. Top reports FX as using 152MB and Deluge as using 65:

$ top

top - 14:09:30 up 1 day,  4:10,  1 user,  load average: 0.17, 0.11, 0.11
Tasks:  81 total,   1 running,  80 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  5.2%us,  1.2%sy,  7.1%ni, 82.9%id,  1.3%wa,  0.0%hi,  2.3%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   2075644k total,  2020272k used,    55372k free,    94100k buffers
Swap:        0k total,        0k used,        0k free,  1569832k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND            
 3505 root      19  -1  338m  57m  11m S    2  2.8  86:17.11 X                  
 3609 b-con     20   0  120m  64m  14m S    2  3.2  46:08.23 deluge             
25201 b-con     20   0  361m 151m  27m S    2  7.5  11:12.90 firefox            
    1 root      20   0  1664  556  492 S    0  0.0   0:01.34 init              
[...]snip[...]

So minus those two fat-packers (I'm not willing to kill them right now to confirm) I would expect to be using about ~140MB. Which seems reasonable to me. [edit]I just killed them and ended with 160, which seems kind of high, but not too bad.[/edit]

Other cmpilation flags... other compilation options... That is reason

Do you have any specific flags/options to offer?

Last edited by B-Con (2008-08-29 22:56:52)

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adekoba

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Registered: 2007-07-10

Posts: 128

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Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

1) open htop
2) sort by mem% usage
3) find the culprit
4) ...
5) Profit!

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Gullible Jones

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Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

I'm running Debian on my laptop right now, and it does seem to use a little less memory, but that may be due to how long it has been running. It looks like this isn't an Arch-specific... thing... I was going to say "problem" but I'm not sure it qualifies as that either.

Baraclese

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Registered: 2008-05-28

Posts: 41

Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

xfce4 and conky after boot: 55MB

whargoul

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From: Odense, Denmark

Registered: 2005-04-04

Posts: 546

Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

After X is starting I use 101M RAM.

I'm running this:

[joey@Kessler ~]$ ps -e 
  PID TTY          TIME CMD
    1 ?        00:00:00 init
    2 ?        00:00:00 kthreadd
    3 ?        00:00:00 ksoftirqd/0
    4 ?        00:00:00 watchdog/0
    5 ?        00:00:00 events/0
    6 ?        00:00:00 khelper
   41 ?        00:00:00 kblockd/0
   44 ?        00:00:00 kacpid
   45 ?        00:00:00 kacpi_notify
  122 ?        00:00:00 cqueue
  129 ?        00:00:00 kseriod
  148 ?        00:00:00 kondemand/0
  159 ?        00:00:00 pdflush
  160 ?        00:00:00 pdflush
  161 ?        00:00:00 kswapd0
  162 ?        00:00:00 kprefetchd
  205 ?        00:00:00 aio/0
  344 ?        00:00:00 edac-poller
  347 ?        00:00:00 rpciod/0
  370 ?        00:00:00 ata/0
  371 ?        00:00:00 ata_aux
  384 ?        00:00:00 scsi_eh_0
  386 ?        00:00:00 scsi_eh_1
  433 ?        00:00:00 kjournald
  492 ?        00:00:00 udevd
  495 ?        00:00:00 ksuspend_usbd
  496 ?        00:00:00 khubd
  503 ?        00:00:00 btaddconn
  504 ?        00:00:00 btdelconn
  643 ?        00:00:00 pccardd
  664 ?        00:00:00 kpsmoused
  701 ?        00:00:00 irda_sir_wq
  708 ?        00:00:00 ipw2100/0
 1729 ?        00:00:00 reiserfs/0
 1730 ?        00:00:00 kjournald
 1731 ?        00:00:00 kjournald
 2326 ?        00:00:00 syslog-ng
 2414 ?        00:00:00 dbus-daemon
 2433 ?        00:00:00 acpid
 2455 ?        00:00:00 hald
 2456 ?        00:00:00 hald-runner
 2473 ?        00:00:02 slim
 2494 tty7     00:00:03 X
 2528 ?        00:00:00 dhcpcd
 2661 ?        00:00:00 hald-addon-usb-
 2671 ?        00:00:00 hald-addon-inpu
 2675 ?        00:00:00 hald-addon-cpuf
 2676 ?        00:00:00 hald-addon-acpi
 2700 ?        00:00:00 hald-addon-stor
 2718 tty1     00:00:00 agetty
 2720 tty2     00:00:00 agetty
 2722 tty3     00:00:00 agetty
 2737 ?        00:00:01 openbox
 2772 ?        00:00:00 dbus-launch
 2773 ?        00:00:00 dbus-daemon
 2777 ?        00:00:00 start_kdeinit
 2779 ?        00:00:00 tpb
 2782 ?        00:00:00 tpb
 2785 ?        00:00:00 bmpanel
 2791 ?        00:00:00 kdeinit
 2795 ?        00:00:00 dcopserver
 2797 ?        00:00:00 klauncher
 2799 ?        00:00:00 kded
 2802 ?        00:00:00 gam_server
 2806 ?        00:00:00 kcminit_startup
 2807 ?        00:00:00 urxvt
 2808 pts/0    00:00:00 bash
 2813 ?        00:00:07 firefox
 2815 ?        00:00:00 gconfd-2
 2929 pts/0    00:00:00 ps

Btw, I'm using xf86-video-intel driver as well.

Last edited by whargoul (2008-08-30 20:32:01)

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Gullible Jones

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Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: Memory usage on Debian vs. Arch

Hmm, I'm never using less than 200 MB after a cold boot. I assume you have your graphics hardware's shared memory set to minimum in the BIOS?