Displaying Memory Hoggers

ddzc · 06-14-2007, 01:42 PM

Hello all,

I'm taking a look at my system and about 90% of it's memory resources are taken.

When I issue the top command, it shows a rotation of processes but they're only hogging 2-5% of the memory. In total, I saw maybe 5-10% of the memory hoggers with the top command.

Are there any other command I can use to see what is hogging my machines memory?

Thanks

wjevans_7d1@yahoo.co · 06-14-2007, 01:56 PM

Maybe you know this already, and maybe you don't. If you do, please ignore this post.

When it first starts running top shows not the memory hoggers at the top of the list, but the cpu hoggers. To sort the processes by memory usage, type the letter "M" (upper case) after you start top.

Hangdog42 · 06-15-2007, 07:32 AM

Odds are it is just Linux using memory efficiently. If you do a little searching you'll find all sorts of threads on this. Basically, Linux will use as much of the RAM as possible for basic system tasks, and swap those out when needed for other programs. It will also leave closed programs in memory until it is needed by an active program.

So unless you're having performance problems, this is likely normal behavior.