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  • High memory usage, from nowhere?

I have high(relatively) memory usage. Closing everything besides a single GNOME terminal instance(for free -m) still show usage of around 1.5 GiB and above.

I just counted and added together all the processes memory usage show in GNOME System Monitor. The total was around 610MiB.

Free -m showed 1.6GiB(A whole GiB out of thin air!).

GNOME System Monitor showed 2GiB(1.4GiB more seemingly from nowhere).

I would appreciate it if you helped me find out where all of this memory usage is coming from, and why memory usage grows the longer the system is up for(memory leak?).


    Xrey274 I was also suspicious about it, so I went to calculate mine Memory usage with only steam in the background and it was showing 1.9GiB usage but when I put all the numbers together it only calculated 1GiB.
    I am kinda worried myself , been reading about AMD's PSP(Platform Security Processor) and Intel's IME(Intel Management Engine) memory leaks are not a joke 🕵️



        laky Xrey274

        my swap is smaller, yes, but I have no taxing services. i have an old amd phenom. my numbers have been much worse depending on open browser, rife with leaks and seizes. Why I'm finding it browser-related and both of you are not probably reflects some lack of understanding somewhere I'm sure. All to say, 'me too, sometimes.'

              5 months later

              brent I've been searching for months now, with no answer. If this is a lack of knowledge, then how are new people supposed to figure out how much ram their system is using? Don't get me wrong I love Linux and Solus, but something are just way too complicated.

                Also the I wanna confirm that it's not from X11 or Budgie desktop. I killed it, yet ram usage remains. At this point I am just confused.

                  Xrey274 that "lack of knowledge" that came out of my mouth was directed at myself, not Solus users. sorry for any confusion.

                    I was referring to myself, when talking about lack of knowledge. My point was that if someone like myself, who above average competence can't figure this simple thing out, then how are new users supposed to figure their way around the OS.

                      Xrey274 just my opinion high memory usage can be a combination of factors or a couple factors: cores, swap, available ram, hardware, even software. In my case upgrading from an olde 2-core system and expanding memory cured me. everyone's situation is unique. If your question is "where do I begin troubleshooting and what do I do about it?" Read this thread an others like it. You might pick up a few terminal commands that may lead you to the answer or least to something specific you can post here to get an answer. It can be maddening, I understand. My system used to get so taxed it would be sluggish. Wish there was a single answer.

                        It's not the high memory usage that's bothering me. I've never used more 1/3 of my 16gb of ram. The point is that I can't seem to figure out where the usage is coming from. Being somewhat of a perfectionist it's been driving me insane to the point of considering reinstalling or even switching distro.

                          Memory usage will within reason always increase as time goes on as more things are cached just in case you need it. An dumped from memory if heavy usage occurs and the system needs to free up that space.

                          You can not compare data provided by different programs, they sum up information in different ways.

                          Different units of measurement such as gb vs gib (often not clear which measurement they're using), what data they include in their calculation, if they round up, etc. Have a look at how memory is defined: cat /proc/meminfo

                          On my system with 32gb ram, which is is not idle and has an uptime of 4 days so large amount of cached data. Used memory is reported as.

                          free -h
                          Reports 5.7Gi

                          htop
                          Reports 6.18G (6.18Gb = 5.75GiB)

                          KSysGuard
                          Reports 5.5Gi

                          I'm not going to manually add up the 427 processes I have running to see if it even gets close. Reboot and its down to 2gb

                          In addition gnomes system monitor only shows your users processes by default, not processes being run as root etc. I would also point out that memory is useless unless its being used. I really wish people would stop freaking out over it.

                          Regardless, you have no problem. But if you wanna drive your self crazy over it and install another distro, go for it.

                            Harvey I agree that memory only matters when you use it, but like Xrey274 said, figuring out where it's being used is difficult at best.

                            I tried to compare browser ram usage on Budgie, Gnome, Fedora 33, and Leap 15.2. The totals shown in the system monitor just didn't add up to how the system was responding. Best I could do was look at the percentage used and not the processes to get a close approximation of which browser was eating more ram.

                                  Brucehankins
                                  Well yeah. Reported RAM usage from one to another is not an indicator of performance or feel. Different distros will compile applications differently. With certain features enabled / disabled, or compile time optimisations against different versions of dependencies with different patches applied.

                                  They very well might report the exact same memory usage but perform drastically different, especially when you consider other default processes running in the background, competing for CPU cycles that are unrelated to the application being tested but take its toll. More or less RAM usage can be irrelevant to the question being asked.

                                  Its like comparing engines by miles per gallon and trying to extrapolate from that which is the fastest. It makes no sense.

                                    You can try ps_mem. Just download

                                    git clone https://github.com/pixelb/ps_mem.git

                                    and use the command

                                    sudo /home/aquila/ps_mem/ps_mem.py -p $(pgrep -d, -u $USER)

                                    Change aquila to your nickname

                                    6 days later

                                    Harvey The thing is that I don't have 400+ processes running. I closed everything including the xorg server, and added up all of the processes memory. I used the same units (Mib or Gib), and all of the info came from one place (so if I was using GNOME System Monitor to count the processes, that the only source of information I would use, the rest would be for reference). I refuse to believe that I Solus ( or Linux in general for that matter) cannot consistently report something as simple and cruicial as memory usage.