[plug] Processor Memory Usage

[raven at themaw.net]

On Sat, 28 Aug 2004, James Devenish wrote:

> In message <Pine.LNX.4.58.0408281805250.8860 at donald.themaw.net>
> on Sat, Aug 28, 2004 at 06:09:20PM +0800, raven at themaw.net wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> What do you mean by this? I'm not sure that Tim was indicating a
> performance problem. Leaks can occur without abnormal levels of
> swapping, especially if they are slow enough become significant
> only over a span of days or months. The leaked memory will, almost
> by definition, not be used again and thus will not be swapping in
> and out. Unless the leak becomes a flood, it can slip under the
> radar. I thought Tim wanted to see if there was a single stand-out
> static consumer of swap space (hence his idea about using `ps`).
> 

I know I'm a little of track.

But it is necessary to know if the system simply needs more swap. It's 
not uncommon for a process' memory usage to grow over a couple of days or 
more.

Having said that perhaps this, over a few days, together with the above 
will help.

ps -Ao pid,user,vsize,size,rss,cmd --sort=-vsize|head -n 20

Ian