I've been running a bit low on memory recently, so I decided to find out where it's going. Obviously my browser is pretty memory-intensive, but I'm not sure there's much I can do about that (short of browsing less, all I can do is tune settings and/or change browsers). So I opened the system monitor and closed out the biggest memory users: firefox, soffice.bin, evolution*, and evince (I had a decent-sized PDF open). After closing those the memory use came down a bit: the largest memory users remaining were nautilus and gedit at 16 and 10 MB, respectively; everything else was taking a very small amount of RAM.
But the total memory use was still above 800 MiB: I calculated 810-812 MB not accounted for in the system monitor. The system monitor helpfully reported: "51% in use from programs, 11% for the cache" or something similar. Why is memory use so high? Vista only requires 512 MB; I have trouble believing that Ubuntu is greedier.
So I guess my questions come down to:
What is using the remaining 800 MB?
How can I reasonably conserve memory?
How long before someone tells me to buy another 2GB?
Why was evolution running in the first place? I don't use it and I've never opened it.
crgreathouse:
I've been running a bit low on memory recently, so I decided to find out where it's going. Obviously my browser is pretty memory-intensive, but I'm not sure there's much I can do about that (short of browsing less, all I can do is tune settings and/or change browsers). So I opened the system monitor and closed out the biggest memory users: firefox, soffice.bin, evolution*, and evince (I had a decent-sized PDF open). After closing those the memory use came down a bit: the largest memory users remaining were nautilus and gedit at 16 and 10 MB, respectively; everything else was taking a very small amount of RAM.
Most (some) UNIX systems will fill memory intentionally. This is done to prevent paging as much as possible. Unless your disk is thrashing, I see no real problem here. (You haven't told us how much memory you have though.)
But the total memory use was still above 800 MiB: I calculated 810-812 MB not accounted for in the system monitor. The system monitor helpfully reported: "51% in use from programs, 11% for the cache" or something similar. Why is memory use so high? Vista only requires 512 MB; I have trouble believing that Ubuntu is greedier.
So I guess my questions come down to:
What is using the remaining 800 MB?
How can I reasonably conserve memory?
How long before someone tells me to buy another 2GB?
Why was evolution running in the first place? I don't use it and I've never opened it.
Autostart at login? Check your session startup list.
I only posted because it had been thrashing. (Now that it's under the limit there's no problem, but I suspect that when I go over again it will do the same.) I identified this by
A marked slowdown in all processes
Hard drive sound
The yellow virtual memory meter (I have the system monitor in my panel) spiked up, where it had previously (hours or days) been flat
I have 2 GB of memory.
Neo
June 21, 2009, 2:14pm
4
See this post on Linux memory:
crgreathouse:
I've been running a bit low on memory recently, so I decided to find out where it's going. Obviously my browser is pretty memory-intensive, but I'm not sure there's much I can do about that (short of browsing less, all I can do is tune settings and/or change browsers). So I opened the system monitor and closed out the biggest memory users: firefox, soffice.bin, evolution*, and evince (I had a decent-sized PDF open). After closing those the memory use came down a bit: the largest memory users remaining were nautilus and gedit at 16 and 10 MB, respectively; everything else was taking a very small amount of RAM.
Instead of 'system monitor', whatever that is, try standard UNIX tools like ps. pastebinning the outputs of 'ps aux' would be informative.
By system monitor I mean the application gnome-system-monitor.
My problem is somewhat decreased by buying up to 4 GB of RAM, but as that's currently full (albeit no performance hit yet) I'll give the output requested:
user@computer:~$ ps aux
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 1 0.0 0.0 4104 364 ? Ss Jul04 0:00 /sbin/init
root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kthreadd]
root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:01 [migration/0]
root 4 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [ksoftirqd/0]
root 5 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [watchdog/0]
root 6 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:01 [migration/1]
root 7 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [ksoftirqd/1]
root 8 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [watchdog/1]
root 9 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:01 [migration/2]
root 10 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [ksoftirqd/2]
root 11 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [watchdog/2]
root 12 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:01 [migration/3]
root 13 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [ksoftirqd/3]
root 14 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [watchdog/3]
root 15 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [events/0]
root 16 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [events/1]
root 17 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [events/2]
root 18 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [events/3]
root 19 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [khelper]
root 20 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kstop/0]
root 21 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kstop/1]
root 22 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kstop/2]
root 23 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kstop/3]
root 24 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kintegrityd/0]
root 25 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kintegrityd/1]
root 26 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kintegrityd/2]
root 27 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kintegrityd/3]
root 28 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kblockd/0]
root 29 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kblockd/1]
root 30 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kblockd/2]
root 31 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kblockd/3]
root 32 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kacpid]
root 33 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kacpi_notify]
root 34 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [cqueue]
root 35 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [ata/0]
root 36 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [ata/1]
root 37 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [ata/2]
root 38 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [ata/3]
root 39 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [ata_aux]
root 40 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [ksuspend_usbd]
root 41 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [khubd]
root 42 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kseriod]
root 43 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kmmcd]
root 44 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [btaddconn]
root 45 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [btdelconn]
root 48 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:05 [kswapd0]
root 49 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [aio/0]
root 50 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [aio/1]
root 51 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [aio/2]
root 52 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [aio/3]
root 53 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [ecryptfs-kthr]
root 56 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [scsi_eh_0]
root 57 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:06 [scsi_eh_1]
root 58 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [scsi_eh_2]
root 59 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [scsi_eh_3]
root 60 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [scsi_eh_4]
root 61 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [scsi_eh_5]
root 62 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kstriped]
root 63 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kmpathd/0]
root 64 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kmpathd/1]
root 65 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kmpathd/2]
root 66 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kmpathd/3]
root 67 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kmpath_handle]
root 68 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [ksnapd]
root 69 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kondemand/0]
root 70 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kondemand/1]
root 71 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kondemand/2]
root 72 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kondemand/3]
root 73 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [krfcommd]
root 380 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [khpsbpkt]
root 672 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [knodemgrd_0]
root 799 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:14 [kjournald]
root 933 0.0 0.0 16788 184 ? S<s Jul04 0:00 /sbin/udevd --d
root 1629 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [kpsmoused]
root 2272 0.0 0.0 3944 240 tty4 Ss+ Jul04 0:00 /sbin/getty 384
root 2273 0.0 0.0 3944 240 tty5 Ss+ Jul04 0:00 /sbin/getty 384
root 2276 0.0 0.0 3944 240 tty2 Ss+ Jul04 0:00 /sbin/getty 384
root 2278 0.0 0.0 3944 240 tty3 Ss+ Jul04 0:00 /sbin/getty 384
root 2280 0.0 0.0 3944 240 tty6 Ss+ Jul04 0:00 /sbin/getty 384
root 2354 0.0 0.0 4604 240 ? Ss Jul04 0:00 /usr/sbin/acpid
syslog 2393 0.0 0.0 12376 460 ? Ss Jul04 0:01 /sbin/syslogd -
root 2416 0.0 0.0 8204 236 ? S Jul04 0:00 /bin/dd bs 1 if
klog 2418 0.0 0.0 7144 348 ? Ss Jul04 0:00 /sbin/klogd -P
108 2441 0.0 0.0 21720 1084 ? Ss Jul04 0:12 /bin/dbus-daemo
111 2599 0.0 0.0 36560 1848 ? Ss Jul04 0:08 /usr/sbin/hald
root 2602 0.0 0.0 107436 2624 ? Ssl Jul04 0:05 /usr/sbin/conso
root 2666 0.0 0.0 15816 756 ? S Jul04 0:00 hald-runner
root 2695 0.0 0.0 28484 544 ? S Jul04 0:00 hald-addon-inpu
root 2747 0.0 0.0 28484 688 ? S Jul04 0:09 hald-addon-stor
root 2748 0.0 0.0 28492 448 ? S Jul04 0:00 /usr/lib/hal/ha
111 2749 0.0 0.0 32392 372 ? S Jul04 0:00 hald-addon-acpi
root 2767 0.0 0.0 28356 528 ? Ss Jul04 0:00 /usr/sbin/bluet
root 2806 0.0 0.0 123136 428 ? Ss Jul04 0:00 /usr/sbin/gdm
root 2809 0.0 0.0 144164 804 ? S Jul04 0:00 /usr/sbin/gdm
root 2814 4.9 40.6 1927648 1414296 tty7 Rs+ Jul04 141:43 /usr/X11R6/bin/
root 2833 0.0 0.0 36676 388 ? Ss Jul04 0:02 /usr/sbin/atiev
root 2865 0.0 0.0 70988 1284 ? Ssl Jul04 0:04 /usr/sbin/Netwo
avahi 2884 0.0 0.0 31896 588 ? Ss Jul04 0:01 avahi-daemon: r
avahi 2885 0.0 0.0 31764 124 ? Ss Jul04 0:00 avahi-daemon: c
root 2896 0.0 0.0 21100 332 ? S Jul04 0:00 /sbin/wpa_suppl
root 2899 0.0 0.0 69120 1232 ? S Jul04 0:01 /usr/sbin/nm-sy
root 2917 0.0 0.0 67960 1156 ? Ss Jul04 0:00 /usr/sbin/cupsd
root 2946 0.0 0.0 33296 504 ? Ss Jul04 0:00 /usr/bin/system
daemon 3019 0.0 0.0 16524 188 ? Ss Jul04 0:00 /usr/sbin/atd
root 3047 0.0 0.0 19972 356 ? Ss Jul04 0:00 /usr/sbin/cron
root 3144 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< Jul04 0:00 [firegl]
root 3145 0.0 0.0 3944 240 tty1 Ss+ Jul04 0:00 /sbin/getty 384
root 3164 0.0 0.0 6488 608 ? S Jul04 0:02 /sbin/dhclient
ntp 3280 0.0 0.0 29708 684 ? Ss Jul04 0:01 /usr/sbin/ntpd
charles 3454 0.0 0.0 84092 784 ? S Jul04 0:00 /usr/bin/gnome-
charles 3466 0.0 0.0 173984 2728 ? Ssl Jul04 0:03 x-session-manag
charles 3523 0.0 0.0 35940 128 ? Ss Jul04 0:00 /usr/bin/ssh-ag
charles 3526 0.0 0.0 23824 260 ? S Jul04 0:00 /usr/bin/dbus-l
charles 3527 0.0 0.0 21792 1172 ? Ss Jul04 0:01 //bin/dbus-daem
charles 3532 0.2 0.1 372328 3828 ? Ssl Jul04 5:50 /usr/bin/pulsea
charles 3533 0.0 0.0 68048 752 ? S Jul04 0:00 /usr/lib/pulsea
charles 3535 0.0 0.0 46076 3044 ? S Jul04 0:26 /usr/lib/libgco
charles 3546 0.0 0.0 165056 2024 ? Ss Jul04 0:00 /usr/bin/seahor
charles 3552 0.0 0.1 225740 4116 ? Ssl Jul04 0:30 /usr/lib/gnome-
charles 3556 0.0 0.0 41248 1396 ? S Jul04 0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/g
charles 3564 0.0 0.0 144868 1056 ? Ssl Jul04 0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs//
charles 3570 0.0 0.0 4024 200 ? S Jul04 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bi
charles 3637 0.3 0.1 234780 4916 ? S Jul04 9:16 /usr/bin/compiz
charles 3638 0.2 0.6 348612 23272 ? S Jul04 5:52 gnome-panel
charles 3640 0.0 0.7 529244 24704 ? S Jul04 0:43 nautilus
charles 3642 0.0 0.0 152348 820 ? Ssl Jul04 0:00 /usr/lib/bonobo
charles 3646 0.0 0.1 191976 3688 ? S Jul04 0:03 nm-applet --sm-
charles 3648 0.0 0.1 237344 4304 ? S Jul04 0:08 update-notifier
charles 3650 0.0 0.0 227248 3084 ? Ss Jul04 0:04 gnome-power-man
charles 3654 0.0 0.0 146936 2364 ? S Jul04 0:00 /usr/lib/notify
charles 3658 0.0 0.0 45424 1616 ? S Jul04 0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/g
charles 3664 0.0 0.1 220100 3752 ? S Jul04 0:00 /usr/lib/gnome-
charles 3666 0.0 0.0 56136 1396 ? S Jul04 0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/g
charles 3668 0.0 0.0 54484 1060 ? S Jul04 0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/g
charles 3669 0.0 0.0 4024 184 ? Ss Jul04 0:00 /bin/sh -c /usr
charles 3670 0.0 0.0 4024 192 ? S Jul04 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bi
charles 3672 0.1 0.2 195724 8048 ? S Jul04 2:54 /usr/bin/gtk-wi
charles 3675 0.4 0.1 217376 5552 ? S Jul04 13:26 /usr/lib/gnome-
charles 3681 0.0 0.1 280584 5532 ? Sl Jul04 0:01 /usr/lib/gnome-
charles 3687 0.0 0.0 40856 804 ? S Jul04 0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/g
charles 3700 12.3 18.5 1626924 647508 ? Rl Jul04 357:07 /usr/lib/firefo
charles 3723 0.0 0.1 162048 3800 ? Ss Jul04 2:04 gnome-screensav
root 4014 0.0 0.0 72664 3360 ? S Jul04 0:00 /usr/bin/python
charles 5469 0.0 0.0 462340 2212 ? Sl Jul05 0:00 /usr/lib/evolut
charles 5473 0.0 0.0 414784 2596 ? Sl Jul05 0:00 /usr/lib/evolut
charles 5483 0.0 0.1 425940 3660 ? Sl Jul05 0:00 /usr/lib/evolut
charles 5929 0.2 0.5 200944 18096 ? Sl 23:25 0:00 gnome-terminal
charles 5930 0.0 0.0 14412 784 ? S 23:25 0:00 gnome-pty-helpe
charles 5931 0.0 0.1 20740 3548 pts/0 Ss+ 23:25 0:00 bash
charles 6093 5.3 0.1 20840 3648 pts/1 Ss 23:32 0:00 bash
charles 6109 0.0 0.0 15172 1136 pts/1 R+ 23:32 0:00 ps aux
charles 6414 0.1 2.8 378084 97976 ? Sl Jul05 4:46 evince file:///
charles 16229 0.2 4.0 918172 142004 ? Sl Jul05 5:46 /usr/lib/openof
root 32686 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S Jul05 0:00 [pdflush]
root 32687 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S Jul05 0:00 [pdflush]
That big honking thing leaking 40% of your RAM and counting looks like your X server. Note how its actual memory consumption is way higher than the amount still paged in(RSS), its allocating lots of memory, not using it, and having it paged out to make room for more! Try upgrading it.
(You can avoid the lines getting cut off by redirecting ps into a file or pipe, by the way.)
what is the output of the free command?
corona688:
That big honking thing leaking 40% of your RAM and counting looks like your X server. Note how its actual memory consumption is way higher than the amount still paged in(RSS), its allocating lots of memory, not using it, and having it paged out to make room for more! Try upgrading it.
(You can avoid the lines getting cut off by redirecting ps into a file or pipe, by the way.)
Corona, thank you. I haven't managed to update it yet, but it looks like you've identified the problem. It's definitely a slow memory leak -- when I first start the system it's taking a much smaller piece of RAM.
It's not too bad right now -- I only started the system 8 hours ago.
~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3401 1913 1488 0 96 484
-/+ buffers/cache: 1331 2069
Swap: 5083 0 5083
The key line in your free output is the buffers/cache line.
Linux will make use of unused memory, and you want it to do this. I will cache things it thinks it may need in the future, almost like read-ahead on hard drives (very simple example and not totally accurate, but works for this).
As an application requires more memory, the kernel will flush some of the cache out to free up memory. So looking at that output, you have slightly over 2GB free.
