Very high memory usage in Xubuntu 13.10 (> 3GB !)

Hi, I'm currently running Xubuntu 13.10 and seem to be using far more memory than expected.

Typing 'free -m' (with nothing except a terminal running) gives:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 4961 4707 253 0 768 488
-/+ buffers/cache: 3450 1510
Swap: 8191 2 8188

I've been told that it's the line 'buffers/cache' that I should look at, rather than the line above it, but even so 3.4 GB seems to be an excessive amount of memory usage considering that absolutely nothing else is running.

Adding up the individual memory usages in Task Manager seems to come to a lot less than the 3450 MB stated above, with Firefox using the most (310 MB, which seems a lot considering I've only got one page - this forum - open).

Can anyone tell me if this is normal for Xubuntu? Thanks.

$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          2015       1887        128         29         48       1496
-/+ buffers/cache:        342       1672
Swap:            0          0          0

Me, I am using 342MB of ram replying to you in Icewm using Iceweasel Browser and my rox terminal open.

top

in terminal will show what is chewing up what, I guess.

also

ps aux | sort -b -k 4 | tail

is another to show top ten memory hogs in terminal.

Howdy and Welcome.

Thanks for the reply rokytnji

The output of ps aux is:

cjs 3479 0.0 0.2 525216 13536 ? Sl 17:42 0:00 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/panel-plugins/xfce4-indicator-plugin 5 6291497 indicator Indicator Plugin An indicator of something that needs your attention on the desktop
cjs 3492 0.0 0.3 253692 15936 ? Sl 17:42 0:00 /usr/bin/python /usr/share/system-config-printer/applet.py
cjs 3461 0.0 0.3 415288 17428 ? Sl 17:42 0:02 xfce4-panel --display :0.0 --sm-client-id 2766d1d1d-e4b3-4fac-88fb-fa309d0a94ad
cjs 3917 0.0 0.3 465096 15884 ? Sl 18:03 0:00 /usr/bin/xfce4-terminal
cjs 3534 0.0 0.3 530876 16832 ? Sl 17:42 0:00 nm-applet
cjs 3495 0.1 0.4 471308 22700 ? Sl 17:42 0:07 /usr/bin/Thunar --daemon
cjs 3477 0.0 0.5 468780 29804 ? Sl 17:42 0:00 /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/blueman-applet
root 3213 1.0 0.6 214132 32000 tty7 Ss+ 17:42 0:54 /usr/bin/X -core :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch
cjs 4056 2.1 5.7 1023004 291944 ? Sl 18:06 1:24 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND

So there's no indication here (or in Task Manager, or by typing top) of any process using all that memory.

Weirdly, the memory usage shot down to 1000MB (after several hours at 3GB+) but has been steadly rising ever since (now up to 1175MB). Nothing is running except firefox, and the memory usage reported for each process by Task Manager hasn't changed much.

Sounds like a memory leak to me maybe.

There was a firefox memory leak I read once about somewhere and for the life of me I can't remember the details or the link.

So>>>> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...uch-memory-ram
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/981570


It would be a steady climb also the longer firefox was running.

If willing to experiment in Xubuntu.

Try installing Midori, Netsurf or maybe even Seamonkey and see if memory usage stays down.

Also if not running Bluetooth devices. Turn off Bluetooth in preferences>startup.

I just looked at my conky and iceweasel is still hanging. I am at about 377MB since I last posted.

cjs 3479 0.0 0.2 525216 13536 ? Sl 17:42 0:00 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/panel-plugins/xfce4-indicator-plugin 5 6291497 indicator Indicator Plugin An indicator of something that needs your attention on the desktop

I am not sure what to make of that since I AM NOT on my MX14 box which runs xfce.

After another couple of hours and it's just dropped to 412MB memory used (and hopefully it will stay like that)! I don't what's been using all that memory, but it hasn't been listed in Task Manager/top etc!

Very strange! But thanks for your help rokytnji.