Memory Utilization

[Harryc]

Please help me fix my memory utilization issue. As it appears below, this thinkpad T-21 is destined to do a lot of swapping. I only have 256mb RAM, but is it normal for Fedora to sit at 250mb used with say mozilla, evolution, and Gaim openned? This seems high. Yeah, I could get more Ram. Any other ideas? This is with Gnome running BTW, if I fire up XFCE, it drops to 181mb utilized. Still seems high.

[root@localhost /]# top

top - 09:00:40 up 25 min, 2 users, load average: 0.28, 0.27, 0.22
Tasks: 77 total, 1 running, 75 sleeping, 1 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 7.6% us, 1.3% sy, 0.0% ni, 91.0% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 257108k total, 249996k used, 7112k free, 17160k buffers
Swap: 523960k total, 0k used, 523960k free, 102540k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
2274 root 15 0 41652 25m 20m S 7.6 10.3 1:29.97 X
2518 harryc 15 0 26256 12m 19m S 1.0 4.9 0:06.27 gnome-terminal
2644 root 16 0 3676 912 1620 R 0.7 0.4 0:00.07 top
1 root 16 0 1928 464 1316 S 0.0 0.2 0:05.59 init
2 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
3 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 events/0
4 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd/0
7 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
5 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.06 khubd
6 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kapmd
8 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush
9 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 pdflush
11 root 15 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/0
10 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 kswapd0
119 root 17 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kseriod
158 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.05 kjournald
1034 root 18 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kjournald
1390 root 16 0 2488 588 1296 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.04 syslogd
1394 root 15 0 2832 436 1244 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.01 klogd
1415 rpc 16 0 2940 580 1372 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 portmap
1435 rpcuser 18 0 2320 724 1380 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.00 rpc.statd
1462 root 16 0 2588 584 1296 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 rpc.idmapd
1503 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pccardd
1509 root 19 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pccardd
1517 root 15 0 3336 612 1260 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.08 cardmgr
1601 root 16 0 2328 440 1240 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 apmd
1679 root 18 0 3184 744 1368 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.00 smartd
1696 root 15 0 8640 2272 5936 S 0.0 0.9 0:00.04 cupsd
1783 root 6 -10 3084 1016 1648 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.00 dhclient
1928 root 20 0 4592 1476 3436 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.20 sshd
1945 root 16 0 3520 916 1684 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.00 xinetd
1955 root 15 0 2488 468 1444 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 gpm
1966 root 16 0 2908 652 1356 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.00 crond
1988 xfs 16 0 4744 3128 2388 S 0.0 1.2 0:00.09 xfs
1998 root 34 19 2784 568 1244 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 anacron
2007 daemon 16 0 2752 612 1348 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 atd
2026 dbus 15 0 3060 904 1700 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.00 dbus-daemon-1
2050 root 18 0 2992 424 1232 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 mingetty
2051 root 18 0 2548 424 1232 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 mingetty
2057 root 18 0 2216 352 1232 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 mingetty
2063 root 18 0 2776 348 1232 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 mingetty
2069 root 18 0 3120 352 1232 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 mingetty
2075 root 18 0 2364 348 1232 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 mingetty
2081 root 15 0 11520 2144 10m S 0.0 0.8 0:00.06 gdm-binary
2263 root 16 0 12044 2916 10m S 0.0 1.1 0:00.72 gdm-binary
2302 harryc 16 0 20948 9704 17m S 0.0 3.8 0:00.82 gnome-session
2343 harryc 16 0 4560 704 3112 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.00 ssh-agent
2347 harryc 16 0 10996 7196 4944 S 0.0 2.8 0:03.24 gconfd-2
2352 harryc 19 0 3408 880 1868 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.00 gnome-keyring-d
2354 harryc 15 0 7948 2780 6216 S 0.0 1.1 0:00.30 bonobo-activati
2356 harryc 16 0 15308 7300 11m S 0.0 2.8 0:01.49 metacity

[malex]

It is normal for a Linux system to fill up all to available memory, but please note that "cached" and "buffers" memory is really free memory which will be used when needed. The system goes low on memory when the "Swap used" grows (now it appears 0k).

[Harryc]

Interesting. I'll need to change my thought process on memory utilization for Linux. To summarize what I thiink you are saying, since my "cached" and "buffers" total 119700k, then I'd safely assume that roughly half of my total physical RAM is available.

[jimbo]

It took me a while to get used to the Linux memory model. It may look like it's eating up all your memory but it really is only caching stuff it's accessed for quick reference. If you watch your memory usage watch 'free -m' for a while you'll see that it is not really swapping much at all unless you run some big memory applications.

From the output you provided your system looks like it's running perfectly normal.

[Harryc]

Thanks for the tips.

[crackers]

I had a chance encounter today that showed the differences between memory-management models: identical IBM T41 laptops, one running Win2K and the other (mine) running FC2.

I was merrily running Outlook (via CrossOver), Eclipse (memory hog), the beta Perforce gui-client (P4V - ROCKS!), three xterms, and two different gvim sessions, all in KDE. My co-worker's laptop was swapping like mad just running Outlook, Eclipse, and Notepad. Needless to say I kept inquiring if the laptop was okay as it seemed to be making a lot of thrashing sounds... :D

[jimbo]

Off topic, but if you are running Outlook, try Evolution! It's great! Some really nice features like virtual folders and really nice filtering. You can even connect to MS Exchange with the Evolution-Connector.

Sorry, just had to plug that since I'm a recovering Outlook user.

[crackers]

Old version of Exchange - but the IT department is upgrading and then it's bye-bye Outlook!