linux memory usage

[msteder]

I am running RedHat Linux 7.3 on a Dell 1650 and I have 512M of memory to which 500MB is showing constantly used by top.

Is there a way to show what is using the memory?

 

[tarn]

Not too sure what you are saying here: your running "top" to check memory usage but top itself is eating 500MB ?

Ok try having a few peeks at /proc/meminfo ..... more /proc/meminfo and see what memory is used, free, swapping etc .... the output is static so you need to more it at intavls.

Another good one is more /proc/cpuinfo

Good Luck

Laurie.

 

[pupu]

Remember that Linux uses much memory for caches. When you need more memory for applications, cache is decreased. Try to use 'free' command.

 

[PcLinuxGuru]

msteder,
Are you looking in the red or green area?

CPU states: 0.0% user, 0.1% system, 0.0% nice, 99.8% idle
Mem: 255384K av, 100832K used, 154552K free, 0K shrd, 14816K buff
Swap: 514072K av, 0K used, 514072K free 51804K cached

PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
26567 root 15 0 1092 1092 852 R 0.3 0.4 0:00 top

The red area is total for your whole system. The green is just that process. So here TOP is using 1092 bytes of memory.

You can also try ps aux and it shows you the same thing. free will show you total memory stats.