who's eating my RAM?

invalid.RemoveThis@domain.invalid wrote:
> After I open and close a few applications like Seamonkey, Firefox, email
> etc. and then closing them all I am using 900M to over a gig.

> If I reboot I go back to my happy 100M or less of RAM,

Memory not in use is memory to no use...

If you check with free you will most likely find that your used memory is
being used to cache your harddisk. This is what free gives on my box:

$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1031712 1018736 12976 0 499092 111572
-/+ buffers/cache: 408072 623640
Swap: 498004 29024 468980

Above you can see the following:

I have 1031712 bytes of RAM (there is 1 GB in the machine)
Almost all, 1018736 bytes has come to some use
I still have 12976 bytes to no use
499092 + 111572 = 610664 bytes are used to speed up my harddisk.
Only 408072 bytes are used for programs
If no RAM would be used for buffers and cache I would have 623640 b free.
My swap space is 498004 bytes
I have used 29024 bytes of my swap.
I still have 468980 bytes left of my swap.

My swap has been used because I have had use for all of my RAM at some
occasion. Now some data is still swapped out, that data is probably never
used, otherwise it would be swapped in and some of the RAM now used to
cache my harddrive could host that data.

regards Henrik
--
The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
hc3(at)poolhem.se Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
root@localhost postmaster@localhost

On Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:59:24 +0000, invalid RemoveThis @domain.invalid wrote:

>I started using conky and I noticed something odd about my Slackware 13 64
>bit system recently. I start out using about 95-100M of RAM. After I open
>and close a few applications like Seamonkey, Firefox, email etc. and then
>closing them all I am using 900M to over a gig. The memory doesn't seem to
>be freed when I close these apps. My WM is Fluxbox.

Memory is in use or available for use. So think of that 'used' memory
as the high water mark, not as memory in current use

Grant.
--
http://bugsplatter.id.au

On 2009-10-06, Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist.RemoveThis@deadspam.com> wrote:

snip

Hi Henrik, here is my output of free after conky shows 1.11G in use:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 4031084 3929536 101548 0 940 2776668
-/+ buffers/cache: 1151928 2879156
Swap: 4209008 0 4209008

I don't understand what free is saying. Is there some way to list memory
from each process and a total at the end?

I think after an app deallocates memory and terminates it should reduce the
amount of memory in use. I can't tell if this is a big storage leak or
normal.

Thank you.

On 2009-10-06, Grant <g_r_a_n_t_.RemoveThis@bugsplatter.id.au> wrote:

> Memory is in use or available for use. So think of that 'used' memory
> as the high water mark, not as memory in current use

Hi Grant,

Your explanation makes sense but I would be happier if I knew all apps were
deallocating memory and no storage leak is happening. Do you know of some
way to see exactly what the storage is being used or not used for?

Thank you.

On October 8, 2009 08:45, in alt.os.linux.slackware, invalid.RemoveThis@domain.invalid
(invalid@domain.invalid) wrote:

> On 2009-10-06, Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist.RemoveThis@deadspam.com> wrote:
>
> snip
>
> Hi Henrik, here is my output of free after conky shows 1.11G in use:
>
> total used free shared buffers cached
> Mem: 4031084 3929536 101548 0 940 2776668
> -/+ buffers/cache: 1151928 2879156
> Swap: 4209008 0 4209008

OK, so lets look at these numbers

You have a total of 4,031,084K of memory available to userland programs.

Of this, 101,548K is entirely unused by anything.

Of the remaining 3,929,536K, the kernel has "borrowed" 2,776,668K to cache
frequently used user data. Note that the kernel will give this memory back
to user apps as they require it.

Of the remaining 1,152,868K, the kernel has "borrowed" an additional 940K to
buffer I/O streams with. Note that the kernel will give this memory back to
user apps as they require it.

So, out of your ~ 4G of userland memory, only 1,151,928K is actually in use
by userland programs.


--
Lew Pitcher

Master Codewright & JOAT-in-training | Registered Linux User #112576
http://pitcher.digitalfreehold.ca/ | GPG public key available by request
---------- Slackware - Because I know what I'm doing. ------

On 2009-10-08, Lew Pitcher <lpitcher.RemoveThis@teksavvy.com> wrote:
> On October 8, 2009 08:45, in alt.os.linux.slackware, invalid.RemoveThis@domain.invalid
> (invalid@domain.invalid) wrote:
>
>> On 2009-10-06, Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist.RemoveThis@deadspam.com> wrote:
>>
>> snip
>>
>> Hi Henrik, here is my output of free after conky shows 1.11G in use:
>>
>> total used free shared buffers cached
>> Mem: 4031084 3929536 101548 0 940 2776668
>> -/+ buffers/cache: 1151928 2879156
>> Swap: 4209008 0 4209008
>
> OK, so lets look at these numbers
>
> You have a total of 4,031,084K of memory available to userland programs.
>
> Of this, 101,548K is entirely unused by anything.
>
> Of the remaining 3,929,536K, the kernel has "borrowed" 2,776,668K to cache
> frequently used user data. Note that the kernel will give this memory back
> to user apps as they require it.
>
> Of the remaining 1,152,868K, the kernel has "borrowed" an additional 940K to
> buffer I/O streams with. Note that the kernel will give this memory back to
> user apps as they require it.
>
> So, out of your ~ 4G of userland memory, only 1,151,928K is actually in use
> by userland programs.
>
>
Hi Lew,

Thanks for your explanation. But nothing is running, that's the problem. Why
should the numbers be so high with only fluxbox and startup services running
and nothing else? There must be a storage leak.

invalid DeleteThis @domain.invalid wrote:
> Thanks for your explanation. But nothing is running, that's the problem. Why
> should the numbers be so high with only fluxbox and startup services running
> and nothing else? There must be a storage leak.

Use "top' in a terminal window (preferable a large one) and press M
while it's running. Then you'll get a list of the top memory using
programs. You'll often see that it is X itself that is using up a lot of
memory.
--
Eef Hartman, Delft University of Technology, dept. SSC/ICT

On 2009-10-08, Eef Hartman <E.J.M.Hartman.TakeThisOut@tudelft.nl> wrote:
> Use "top' in a terminal window (preferable a large one) and press M
> while it's running. Then you'll get a list of the top memory using
> programs. You'll often see that it is X itself that is using up a lot of
> memory.

Now I'm down to 650M and X is taking 429 of it.....thanks I will try this
when the numbers go higher. Looks as if some of the memory does get
deallocated over time.

On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:46:29 +0000, invalid.TakeThisOut@domain.invalid wrote:

>On 2009-10-06, Grant <g_r_a_n_t_.TakeThisOut@bugsplatter.id.au> wrote:
>
>> Memory is in use or available for use. So think of that 'used' memory
>> as the high water mark, not as memory in current use
>
>Hi Grant,
>
>Your explanation makes sense but I would be happier if I knew all apps were
>deallocating memory and no storage leak is happening. Do you know of some
>way to see exactly what the storage is being used or not used for?

To be honest it's not a problem I look at very often. There's a
server I wrote in perl a while back (holds ~150k records in memory,
talks via sockets) that I monitored for memory leakage and fixed up,
but that was last edited a year ago.

In general you'll notice a slowly increasing memory footprint for a
leaky app. -- but I forgot exactly how one might check that, try
looking at top, /proc/meminfo or /proc/$pid info.

Grant.
--
http://bugsplatter.id.au

On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:04:35 -0400, <invalid.TakeThisOut@domain.invalid> wrote:

> Now I'm down to 650M and X is taking 429 of it.....thanks I will try this
> when the numbers go higher. Looks as if some of the memory does get
> deallocated over time.

The thing to remember is that not only does the kernel use memory when
nothing else is using it, but programs will also grab extra memory if no
one else is using it (depending on the program). These programs will
usually give up this memory when other applications need it.

Aaron W. Hsu

--
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its
victims may be the most oppressive. -- C. S. Lewis

Grant <g_r_a_n_t_.RemoveThis@bugsplatter.id.au> wrote:
> In general you'll notice a slowly increasing memory footprint for a
> leaky app. -- but I forgot exactly how one might check that, try
> looking at top, /proc/meminfo or /proc/$pid info.

There are different tools to debug memory leaks in apps. One of my
favorites is valgrind.

All apps release leaked memory when killed. The exception is shared
memory used for interprocess commnication (sys v ipc). Such memory is
possible to find with ipcs and release with ipcrm. Fortunately not many
programs use sys v ipc.

regards Henrik
--
The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
hc3(at)poolhem.se Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
root@localhost postmaster@localhost

On 2009-10-08, Aaron W. Hsu <arcfide.TakeThisOut@sacrideo.us> wrote:
> On Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:04:35 -0400, <invalid.TakeThisOut@domain.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Now I'm down to 650M and X is taking 429 of it.....thanks I will try this
>> when the numbers go higher. Looks as if some of the memory does get
>> deallocated over time.
>
> The thing to remember is that not only does the kernel use memory when
> nothing else is using it, but programs will also grab extra memory if no
> one else is using it (depending on the program). These programs will
> usually give up this memory when other applications need it.
>
> Aaron W. Hsu
>
Thanks Aaron. That doesn't seem to explain what's happening now but it does
help to know anyway.

Thank you.