Excessive RAM consumption

English Applications
1

It would appear from this listing that something is consuming my RAM. Last time i looked at this file I was using approx 1.2 gig out of 7.8 gig … now, without any major changes i have only 144,912kb free???

Am i misinterpreting this information?? … or do i have a config, or other, problem?

Thanks

###########################################
~> cat /proc/meminfo

MemTotal:        8156628 kB
MemFree:          144912 kB
Buffers:         2900988 kB
Cached:          3387412 kB
SwapCached:            0 kB
Active:          1549676 kB
Inactive:        6102240 kB
Active(anon):    1043148 kB
Inactive(anon):   355460 kB
Active(file):     506528 kB
Inactive(file):  5746780 kB
Unevictable:          60 kB
Mlocked:              60 kB
SwapTotal:       7812092 kB
SwapFree:        7812088 kB
Dirty:            202284 kB
Writeback:         17632 kB
AnonPages:       1362448 kB
Mapped:           280444 kB
Shmem:             34708 kB
Slab:             187740 kB
SReclaimable:     145524 kB
SUnreclaim:        42216 kB
KernelStack:        3880 kB
PageTables:        42628 kB
NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
Bounce:                0 kB
WritebackTmp:          0 kB
CommitLimit:    11890404 kB
Committed_AS:    5078248 kB
VmallocTotal:   34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed:      141560 kB
VmallocChunk:   34359586300 kB
HardwareCorrupted:     0 kB
AnonHugePages:    325632 kB
HugePages_Total:       0
HugePages_Free:        0
HugePages_Rsvd:        0
HugePages_Surp:        0
Hugepagesize:       2048 kB
DirectMap4k:      210944 kB
DirectMap2M:     8153088 kB

Could all these instances of Chromium be the cause??

Screenshot of System
http://files.zimpics.org/os/processes_lowmem.png

System info:

http://files.zimpics.org/os/system.png

2

You should probably just focus on the Active number, or look at the ‘free’
command’s output. The number you see is also including cached memory,
which is not really a fair assessment since cache is handled by the OS to
automatically help system performance but can be freed at a moment’s
notice should the system need it for something else.

Good luck.

3

Ab is correct - you can add the amount shown in meminfo as

Cached: 3387412 kB

To more closely reflect the actual available memory.

This is also show in the free command, where +/- Buffers and Cache let you see how much memory is actually available.

Linux uses all “extra” memory as drive cache, so that if recently read files are needed again they can obtained from RAM, preventing access to disk.

You can forcibly free this (as root) with:

echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

For more information, and examples showing usage, see: Experiments and fun with the Linux disk cache

4

Okay!!! … perfect … thnx, now i know what is going on!! Not that the system was misbehaving … just a curious question.

Can’t believe how great this OS is!

Magic!

5

On 07/29/2013 03:06 PM, griadooss wrote:
> Okay!!! … perfect … thnx, now i know what is going on!! Not that the
> system was misbehaving … just a curious question.

yes, the linux kernel looks at RAM like: unused RAM is wasted!!
expect it to be “used” but, “not really” read here for a fuller
understanding http://www.linuxatemyram.com/

–
dd
http://tinyurl.com/DD-Complaints