memory troubles?

[Aart Koelewijn]

Op ma, 17-12-2007 te 12:52 -0500, schreef Ashley Benton:
> I think I found the command to display my memory usage but I don't
> understand the difference between top and ps --user=root -f -u.
> The two output are completely different and apparently the processes
> using memory are root processes. How can I find out what they are
> excatly and if I can stop them from running? 
> Any help would be appreciated
> thanks
> Meg
> 
> Top
> Cpu(s):  4.3%us,  0.7%sy,  0.0%ni, 94.3%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.7%si,
> 0.0%st
> Mem:    515712k total,   504592k used,    11120k free,    14980k
> buffers 
> Swap:  1510068k total,    34744k used,  1475324k free,   203036k
> cached

Do not worry. *nix always has lots of programs running (or waiting) in
the background. In general they are needed to keep the whole system
running at all. Also it is usual that almost all RAM is used. A program
that is stopped usually wil stay in RAM to see if it is needed again.
Only when a new program is started and needs free RAM stopped programs
are deleted from RAM (but often kept in swap, because programs usually
start faster from swap then from RAM). For me:

Mem:    386880k total,   344904k used,    41976k free,     1992k buffers
Swap:  2097136k total,   141940k used,  1955196k free,    85044k cached

after almost 2 days running. In my case swap is much too big, and the
computer starts to get slower when swap is 40-50% full. Logging out of X
and then restart X  will usually clear that (I don't like to reboot
because some servers are running on the computer)

Aart