why does X hate RAM?

phrakture · 2005-02-08 22:21:14

is there any way to reduce the amount of RAM that X "holds" - every type of system monitor tool spits out that I have a constant "507/512 MB" in use... eh it varies from about 490 to 510, but it just seems rediculous... I've seen screenshots of people running X at around 130/512, so maybe it's just me...

Any ideas/pointers would be great, thanks

xerxes2 · 2005-02-08 22:55:25

it's just cached,
try € free

phrakture · 2005-02-08 23:00:30

no that usage is displayed by free... as well as top and others of it's ilk... as well as gkrellm, szs2nd (for wmi), and torsmo...

Gullible Jones · 2005-02-09 01:58:30

Meh? X functions just as well with 128 megs of physical RAM as with 512, unless you use KDE or GNOME or something. And I swear I've never seen X eating up more than 50 megs, almost certainly less than that. :?

(The disk cache on Linux does seem to eat up a lot of RAM though... Hmm, maybe you should open a terminal and do "hwd -y". That should show you what's being used by programs and what the disk cache is eating up, IIRC.)

lucke · 2005-02-09 02:08:35

top - 02:58:59 up 11 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.26, 0.41, 0.29
Tasks:  65 total,   4 running,  61 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 12.3% us,  2.7% sy,  0.0% ni, 85.0% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:    514232k total,   450604k used,    63628k free,    97452k buffers
Swap:   120448k total,        0k used,   120448k free,   176588k cached

As you see in top, my system with X/KDE behaves similarly (a bit less 'extreme'). But, for example, superkaramba's memory sensor and htop show 180 mb actually used atm, so does kde's info center (referred to as 'application data'). So, it just depends what you're counting into it, free and top seem to sum up application data, disk buffers and disk cache as default.

iphitus · 2005-02-09 10:47:07

Mem: 496840k total, 492244k used, 4596k free, 27192k buffers

It's being taken by cache, not by X.

3399 iphitus 20 0 114m 51m 20m S 1.0 10.5 1:54.82 firefox-bin
2783 root 20 0 159m 27m 4040 S 0.7 5.8 3:23.20 X

X = 5.8% RAM usage
Firefox = 10.5 % Usage

Note that I do have a lot of tabs open in firefox

iphitus

kth5 · 2005-02-09 11:27:33

X/KDE isn't all that memory hungy at all. these stats come from a running KDE session with konqueror, konsole, xmms and full eyecandy while i compile kde-cvs:

top - 12:26:50 up  3:05,  1 user,  load average: 1.87, 1.66, 1.57
Tasks:  92 total,   2 running,  90 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 86.0% us, 12.3% sy,  0.0% ni,  0.0% id,  1.3% wa,  0.3% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:    513320k total,   389124k used,   124196k free,    44096k buffers
Swap:   248996k total,      800k used,   248196k free,   159376k cached

note that i run a couple of daemons in background as well.

phrakture · 2005-02-09 15:24:11

well, ok.... seems others have the same issue - I just assumed it was X because my mem usage isn't as high in console mode....

question 2) how can I get the actual usage if that is taking cache into account... i don't want "98% memory usage" when I check this stuff...

lucke · 2005-02-09 15:30:24

Install htop, it shows it nicely. There's a PKGBUILD over the package subforum.

xerxes2 · 2005-02-09 18:01:07

do as I said before, € free

dp · 2005-02-09 19:04:28

xerxes2 wrote:

do as I said before, € free

maybe the "euro" is confusing ... xerxes2 said:

[damir@Asteraceae ~]$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           754        691         62          0        105        291
-/+ buffers/cache:        295        459
Swap:          804          0        804

very clean and easy, right?

phrakture · 2005-02-09 19:25:49

dp wrote:

xerxes2 wrote:
do as I said before, € free
maybe the "euro" is confusing ... xerxes2 said:
[damir@Asteraceae ~]$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           754        691         62          0        105        291
-/+ buffers/cache:        295        459
Swap:          804          0        804
very clean and easy, right?

oh, so I believe xerxes was pointing at the second line... I was looking at the first and was thinking along the lines of "damn 691/754 used..." but I guess the second line subtracts the buffers and cache...

dp · 2005-02-09 21:07:52

phrakture wrote:

dp wrote:
xerxes2 wrote:
do as I said before, € free
maybe the "euro" is confusing ... xerxes2 said:
[damir@Asteraceae ~]$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           754        691         62          0        105        291
-/+ buffers/cache:        295        459
Swap:          804          0        804
very clean and easy, right?
oh, so I believe xerxes was pointing at the second line... I was looking at the first and was thinking along the lines of "damn 691/754 used..." but I guess the second line subtracts the buffers and cache...

yes .... the active used mem is (in this example) 295MB (while having full kde running and compiling things in background)

Arch Linux

#1 2005-02-08 22:21:14

why does X hate RAM?

#2 2005-02-08 22:55:25

Re: why does X hate RAM?

#3 2005-02-08 23:00:30

Re: why does X hate RAM?

#4 2005-02-09 01:58:30

Re: why does X hate RAM?

#5 2005-02-09 02:08:35

Re: why does X hate RAM?

#6 2005-02-09 10:47:07

Re: why does X hate RAM?

#7 2005-02-09 11:27:33

Re: why does X hate RAM?

#8 2005-02-09 15:24:11

Re: why does X hate RAM?

#9 2005-02-09 15:30:24

Re: why does X hate RAM?

#10 2005-02-09 18:01:07

Re: why does X hate RAM?

#11 2005-02-09 19:04:28

Re: why does X hate RAM?

#12 2005-02-09 19:25:49

Re: why does X hate RAM?

#13 2005-02-09 21:07:52

Re: why does X hate RAM?

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