[NTLUG:Discuss] where's the memory?

[bryn konti]

Turn off uneeded processes and stop them from auto
starting.  If none of your processes are memory hogs
from what the ps or top  commands can tell you, then
the main memory hog is  probably the kernel. As a last
resort you could recompile the kernel and get rid of
the things you know you'll never use and  install
loadable kernel modules instead of drivers/functions
compliled directly into the kernel.  I have done this
myself, and it nearly always provides a noticeable
performance boost.....and besides fundamental
customization  is what linux is all about in my
opinion.  And  if you don't like the new smaller
kernel you could always boot back to the old bloated
one.  


--- kbrannen at gte.net wrote:
> I've got a SuSE 7.3 system (upgraded from 7.1) that
> seems to be leaking memory 
> like a sieve (or almost that bad. :-)  Upon boot and
> starting X, I find that 
> I'm using about 32M or so of memory.  However, after
> using the system for a 
> few hours over several days, I'll suddenly notice
> that I've used almost all my 
> physical RAM.  Like now! :-)
> 
> The "free" command shows:
>               total    used    free  shared buffers 
> cached
> Mem:        384648  352976   31672       0   28392  
> 41476
> -/+ buffers/cache:  283108  101540
> Swap:       265060     796  264264
> 
> and my "xosview" shows that I'm using about 280M to
> 300M of memory, so those 2 
> numbers match.  But when I whip up a little perl
> script to look at the output 
> of "ps", things don't match up so nicely:
> 
> RSS SZ CMD       0 0
> 208 112 init     208 112
> 0 0 keventd      208 112
> ...
> 8472 4564 X      28832 34319  #the biggest process
> ...
> 1828 702 ps      47992 45271
> 1184 685 perl    49176 45956
> 
> I've only reproduced a few lines of the output. 
> Columns 1-3 are from "ps", 
> column 4 is the current total of all the RSS values,
> while column 5 is the 
> current total of all the SZ values.  So I read this
> as saying I should be 
> using about 50M?
> 
> The script I used was:
> ps -ely | perl -ne '@f = split; $r += $f[7]; $s +=
> $f[8]; print "$f[7] $f[8] 
> $f[12] \t $r $s\n"'
> 
> (If your system has an auto alias for ps like mine
> did, either do /bin/ps, or 
> "unalias ps" first.)
> 
> At first I thought it was X cacheing a bunch of
> pixmaps or something and not 
> letting go, now I'm not so sure.  Does anyone else
> know how I might track this 
> down?  Or where the memory is going?
> 
> I've suspected the X server because if I shut down
> the X environment, then a 
> "free" back at the console shows that I've recovered
> almost all of the "lost" 
> memory (I log in non-X and use startx).
> 
> Thoughts?  Help?  Pointers?
> 
> Thanks,
> Kevin
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> http://www.ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss


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