"top" command memory question
 

Hi,

I run the command "top" and was wondering why so much memory is used. Following is a snapshot :
---------------------------------------------------
11:43am up 4 days, 1:29, 4 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.05
59 processes: 58 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU0 states: 0.0% user, 0.0% system, 0.0% nice, 100.0% idle
CPU1 states: 0.0% user, 0.0% system, 0.0% nice, 100.0% idle
Mem: 2064172K av, 2048696K used, 15476K free, 0K shrd, 362856K buff
Swap: 2040244K av, 0K used, 2040244K free 1530488K cached

PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
32408 gdm 15 0 17084 16M 6100 S 0.0 0.8 0:01 gdmgreeter
957 root 5 -10 137M 9980 2556 S < 0.0 0.4 24:10 X
-----------------------------------------------------

I've used the "M" option to sort the processes in order of memory usage. My Question is : why is (2064172K av, 2048696K used)? What could account for this large memory usage?

Thanks for any comments!
YS.

Its X that causes this. If you boot to runlevel 3 and run the top command you'll see a big difference.

Linux accounts for this "usage". Much of that memory is not being used, it is cached or shared - have a look at this thread on this often-asked question -

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ight=ram+usage

:)

you have 2GB ram? Is this your desktop or a server?

Thanks, crash_again. I've tried wat you suggested. :) And... yes the pc has 2 GB ram. It's used as a linux server where we can ssh to run stuff for research.