hi, i have been checking my memory usage lately. i am curious about my
memory consumption right after boot. the first thing i do is log in a
root and do
# free
one of two things tends to come up:
**********mem condition 1:
total used free shared buffers
cached
Mem: 63056 28552 34504 8448 2480
19860
-/+ buffers/cache: 6212 56844
Swap: 104384 0 104384
**********mem condition 2:
total used free shared buffers
cached
Mem: 63056 61508 1548 7728 44940
6436
-/+ buffers/cache: 10132 52924
Swap: 104384 144 104240
condition one seems really bad as nearly half my memory is gone before i
have even done anything. condition two is even worse. why the huge
consumption? and why do two different boots use two radically different
amounts of memory.
if i do 'ps aux' on either of these conditions, then i always get
similar results.
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 1 2.6 0.7 1148 492 ? S 21:04 0:04 init [3]
root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 21:04 0:00 [kflushd]
root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 21:04 0:00 [kupdate]
root 4 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 21:04 0:00 [kpiod]
root 5 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 21:04 0:00 [kswapd]
root 213 0.0 1.0 1344 648 ? S 21:05 0:00 syslogd
root 223 0.0 1.2 1424 768 ? S 21:05 0:00 klogd
daemon 238 0.0 0.8 1172 512 ? S 21:05 0:00
/usr/sbin/atd
root 253 0.0 1.0 1368 644 ? S 21:05 0:00 crond
root 268 0.0 0.9 1360 600 ? S 21:05 0:00 lpd
root 306 0.0 0.7 1180 460 ? S 21:05 0:00 gpm -t
ps/2
xfs 330 0.1 2.3 2588 1476 ? S 21:05 0:00 xfs -port
-1
root 353 0.0 1.6 2228 1064 tty1 S 21:05 0:00 login --
root
root 354 0.0 0.6 1124 424 tty2 S 21:05 0:00
/sbin/mingetty tt
root 355 0.0 0.6 1124 424 tty3 S 21:05 0:00
/sbin/mingetty tt
root 356 0.0 0.6 1124 424 tty4 S 21:05 0:00
/sbin/mingetty tt
root 357 0.0 0.6 1124 424 tty5 S 21:05 0:00
/sbin/mingetty tt
root 358 0.0 0.6 1124 424 tty6 S 21:05 0:00
/sbin/mingetty tt
root 361 0.0 1.9 2088 1216 tty1 S 21:05 0:00 -bash
root 384 0.0 1.2 1544 776 ttyS1 S 21:06 0:00 pppd
root 434 0.0 1.3 2512 860 tty1 R 21:07 0:00 ps aux
where is the big memory hog? is ps right or is free right, they both
are reporting different things? and why would a freshly booted system
use 61 megs ram?
please help me understand this! better yet, please help me fix this!
:P
