I'm a bit confused about how memory usage is showing up in gkrellm. I know Linux uses cache, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the actual application part.

Gkrellm reports: 528MB
System Monitor reports: 273MB
Info Center reports: ~528MB
free reports about: 529MB

It looks like gkrellm is pretty close but why is System Monitor reporting so low?

I also notice sometimes that gkrellm reports little CPU activity when it is banging away. I can hear the fan running. I only here that when the CPU is running at full speed. System Monitor shows it banging away at 100%. I notice this a lot when running f-prot. It shows it running for a bit, then it slowing down, then going back up to full speed again. System Monitor shows it banging away at full speed all the time. It acts like the permissions on the files it scans makes a difference.

Why am I getting all these different values for CPU and memory?

Any ideas? Anybody else notice this? Am I the only one.

Gkrellm is 2.2.1 and KDE 3.2.2 by the way.

Need more info?

"Why am I getting all these different values for CPU and memory?"

Here is a thread that discusses what the memory usage reports actually mean:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=91829

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Steve Stites

the above thread should explain things clearly

if you want gkrellm to show the buffers/cache, go into the configuration and under memory, check off "show krells for buffer and cache"; it will show two more krells in the memory meter

as for cpu usage... depends on what kernel you're using; on a 2.4.x kernel, you should see constant cpu usage when you're using an intense program; on 2.6.x, because it polls 1000 times a second, there will be down times reported (because the cpu is never exactly constant)

also, i doubt you can hear your cpu... that is definitely your harddrive; even when you are copying large/many files from one disk to another, cpu usage may be very limited and the harddisks will be grinding away

My CPU fan is temp controlled. When the CPU is under heavy load, I can hear the FAN running, not the CPU itself. My hearing is not that good.

I know about the cache part of the memory. I am talking about the application memory itself, not the cache. Maybe some just compute it differently.

I see the point on the CPU thing. But Gkrellm shows it almost idle while System Monitor shows a constant 100%. It is a big difference and a constant difference. It's like it doesn't see certain processes for some reason. I LOVE gkrellm, I'm just curious about the reporting.

I have it showing the krells already. I like seeing it cache all the stuff that is frequently used. With 1GB, it takes a while to fill up.

Oh well. What ever.

I'm no expert on this but i think memory usage has evolved while we are still thinking old school...
think of all user and kernel space memory now as virtual memory accept for the memory tables where the
pages for each process is mapped to RAM -- this gives each and every process access to the entire ram
accept what is used up by the tables themselves..
this is then proccessed by the CPU's MMU and it's own internal cache
lots of different stuff can be mapped to the same point in the RAM all at once......

About the CPU-Usage...
With Kernel 2.6 a new CPU Stat was introduced called IOWait. You can see it when using top for instance, it's 'wa'. IOWait is exactly what it's name suggests: the time percentage spend waiting for (Disk)I/O.
So, if GKrellm runs on a 2.6 Kernel, it simply subtracts the the IOWait from the CPU-Usage to give a more accurate feedback if the CPU is really working or just polling/waiting (which also eats CPU, but no work, apart from data-transfer, is done).

So if you check with the disk-IO chart, you should notice that if there is a lot of data transfered, CPU-Usage drops and vice versa. With your f-prot example that would be loading the file: CPU drops, Disk raises - scanning the file: the other way round.
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Rud

That makes sense. It's sort of working but really waiting on the data to work with. Basically telling the hard drive to hurry the heck up. That I can see. The kernel is sort of keeping the CPU going while it waits for the drive.

Things are getting better and making sense now. I use 2.6.6 to by the way.

Much better.