[plug] Processor Memory Usage

[raven at themaw.net]

On Sat, 28 Aug 2004, James Devenish wrote:

> In message <Pine.LNX.4.58.0408281743130.1412 at donald.themaw.net>
> on Sat, Aug 28, 2004 at 05:50:13PM +0800, raven at themaw.net wrote:
> > Your memory usage is likely to continue to be around 100% as Unix will use 
> > whatever it can get for the buffer cache and the like. Don't expect to see 
> > free memory any time soon unless you have seriously more RAM than you 
> > need.
> 
> I think Tim knows this. But, like you, I'm not sure why 50% swap usage
> would be a problem per se. I guess it is just abnormal for Tim's
> computer, and he might want to keep an eye on any particular process
> that appears to be leaking. I know some UNIX versions of top let you
> sort by your choice of either resident size or total size, e.g. by
> issuing the 'o' command in interactive mode and typing the name of
> the column. Some Linux versions are more novel in their approach to
> interactive sorting, but I think the same is possible.

vmstat <interval>

will show if there's problematic swapping (paging) going on. If the usage 
settles down then there's probably not a memory leak.

Ian