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Hello all
Im running suse linux 9.2 pro on a dell inspiron 9300 and my system is maxed out. i have 512mb of ram and its using just about all 512. the KDE system gaurd is saying there is only 3 mb of mem left. im new to linux so im not sure what porcess i can kill to free up some memory. can anyone help me.

run the top utility and see what is eating up your memory. also check how swap is being used. this is serious because SuSE only expects 64Mb and likes 128.

here is a copy of the history from the top util

top - 10:32:37 up 3:35, 3 users, load average: 0.13, 0.05, 0.01
Tasks: 77 total, 1 running, 76 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 1.3% us, 3.3% sy, 0.0% ni, 95.3% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 515548k total, 506852k used, 8696k free, 39928k buffers
Swap: 1036184k total, 488k used, 1035696k free, 354148k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
8555 chris 17 0 3340 1244 2952 S 3.3 0.2 0:35.85 ksysguardd
5267 root 15 0 82900 14m 68m S 0.3 2.9 6:27.17 X
8501 chris 15 0 33552 19m 27m S 0.3 3.9 0:06.09 kdeinit
8554 chris 16 0 28712 16m 25m S 0.3 3.3 0:21.62 ksysguard
1 root 16 0 596 236 452 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.09 init
2 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
3 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 events/0
4 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
5 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 netlink/0
6 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:10.44 kacpid
30 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.20 kblockd/0
40 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.24 pdflush
41 root 16 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.16 pdflush
43 root 6 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/0
42 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.04 kswapd0
626 root 25 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kseriod
1393 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ata/0
1395 root 23 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_0
1523 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 reiserfs/0
2227 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.05 khubd
2283 root 5 -10 1360 308 1212 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 udevd
2914 root 16 0 1432 436 1212 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 hwscand
2942 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khpsbpkt
2970 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 knodemgrd_0
2995 root 16 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pccardd
3511 root 18 0 1512 708 1244 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 cardmgr
4013 root 16 0 1444 604 1276 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.01 syslogd
4022 root 15 0 1516 576 1228 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 klogd
4754 root 16 0 2032 692 1868 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.03 resmgrd
4767 nobody 16 0 1428 496 1264 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 portmap
4876 root 16 0 4120 1552 3900 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.38 smpppd
4903 root 22 0 5148 1892 4752 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.05 sshd
4906 root 16 0 6196 4740 2084 S 0.0 0.9 0:00.00 antivir
4908 root 16 0 6196 4740 2084 S 0.0 0.9 0:00.00 antivir
4910 root 16 0 6196 4740 2084 S 0.0 0.9 0:00.00 antivir
5090 root 16 0 1388 540 1220 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 acpid
5111 root 15 0 2712 1236 2532 S 0.0 0.2 0:18.98 powersaved
5223 lp 16 0 6392 3220 3388 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.14 cupsd
5242 root 18 0 2072 912 1744 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 xinetd

You don't have anything eating up RAM in there ... look at your header: I see 8Mb free... ksysguard seems to be telling pork-pies.
Here's mine for comparison:

Code:

top - 09:54:04 up 14:55,  2 users,  load average: 0.37, 0.45, 0.42

Tasks:  94 total,  2 running,  92 sleeping,  0 stopped,  0 zombie

Cpu(s):  3.3% us,  3.0% sy,  0.0% ni, 93.4% id,  0.0% wa,  0.3% hi,  0.0% si

Mem:    775676k total,  745844k used,    29832k free,  133900k buffers

Swap:  1012084k total,      216k used,  1011868k free,  163316k cached

... as you see, not having much RAM to spare is not unusual. As with you, I'm using almost all my RAM (most of it is "cached") and also like you, almost no swap. The very small swap usage suggests that RAM use isn't impacting on performance. If you are not getting any performance loss then you probably don't need to worry.

A better idea of how much mem is available, use free -m:

Code:

]$ free -m

            total      used      free    shared    buffers    cached

Mem:          757        728        29          0        130        159

-/+ buffers/cache:        437        319

Swap:          988          0        988

The +/- buffers/cache line shows how much memory is available for running applications. Here I have 319Mb (approx) available and another 29Mb unallocated.

For a complete picture see: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=175419

I should really get around to supporting gentoo... every time I have a general question, these guys have the answer.

ok it just seems like it using alot of memory. the reason i was question it was i was using the kmail trying to added a task and it came up with an error about memory usage and it couldnt perform the task. I dont remember the exact message but thats when i ran the sys guard. Im still trying to understand everything under linux. I been toying around with it for about 6 months now and im liking more andn more everyday.

You read the link?
You tried "free -m"?