Strange memory occurances

[AnonymousHive]

Well, recently I have noticed (ever since I installed a dockapp in fluxbox that lets me easily monitor memory usage,) that after a fresh reboot, with only system processes, fluxbox, and several dockapps running, my memory usage is around 100-150 mb. Once I get everything up and running, and especially after browsing the web for awhile with firefox, my memory usage will go up past the 504 ram max and go into swap usage. Even after I close all of my apps that were open except those slitapps, the memory usage remains high. I'll quit X with init 1 and pkill X, reboot it, and still, the memory usage is massive. A complete reboot will clear the memory however. Any insights as to this problem are appreciated.

[lakerdonald]

You can use top to see the biggest memory consumers / proc consumers.

[AnonymousHive]

I used top, but the memory doesn't add up. There is X which uses around 150 mb of memory, but there are no other major memory users listed. A lot of processes come out to 0 bytes of memory in that list.

[lakerdonald]

Sounds like something is leaking memory...

[antidrugue]

When you do

ps aux

...are you positive that it doesn't add-up? Even when all your programs are closed?

Anyway, nothing sounds abnormal to me here. Many processes are cached into memory or put in buffers, even after their closure.

[Cryptofreak]

Just a thought, but have you checked recently to see if there is a bot or a rootkit on your system? You may want to do a scan or two and see if anything malicious might have sneaked onto your machine.