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Can someone help me understand this? The way I read this top shows I am using over 6.5gb of memory but System Monitor shows less than 1gb. I must not ...
- 10-26-2011 #1Just Joined!
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Memory Usage - top vs System Monitor (Solved)
Can someone help me understand this? The way I read this top shows I am using over 6.5gb of memory but System Monitor shows less than 1gb. I must not understand how to read these correctly. Can anyone help? The attached link shows a snapshot of top and System Monitor.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6865564/Screenshot.png
- 10-26-2011 #2Trusted Penguin
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I suspect it's because top and System Monitor handle this case differently:
Help! Linux ate my RAM!DISTRO=Arch
Registered Linux User #388732
- 10-26-2011 #3Just Joined!
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Perfect. Thanks. I figured there had to be a logical explanation.
- 10-27-2011 #4Linux Guru
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Yes, this confuses a lot of new Linux users. "I'm not doing anything, and 99% of my memory is used!"... Caching really speeds up the system, but it utilizes a LRU (Least Recently Used) algorithm to keep stuff (files, executable images, etc) in memory because that is the stuff that is most likely to be used again, eliminating the need to read it from disc, which is orders of magnitude (1 order = 10x) slower than RAM, especially in current systems. You can see it if you do something like executing the command "ls -R" on a directory tree. The first time, it is noticeably slow and you will see the disc activity light flash as it reads the file system from disc. Do it again, and the results will be instantaneous and the disc light will stay off because all that directory information is now cached in RAM.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real time.
Just remember, Semper Gumbi - always be flexible!
- 10-28-2011 #5Just Joined!
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Great test to run ls -R. You can really notice the difference. Thanks for the education. Sad thing is I don't really consider myself a new linux user! Just took me a couple of years to ask the question to figure out what I was looking at!
- 10-28-2011 #6Linux Guru
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The first step to wisdom is knowing what you don't know!
Glad to help "illuminate" things a bit for you!
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real time.
Just remember, Semper Gumbi - always be flexible!
- 10-30-2011 #7Just Joined!
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The other thing I know I don't know is how the heck to mark this thread as solved...
Feeling pretty stupid...
- 10-30-2011 #8Linux Guru
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I think one of the moderators needs to do that now - an inadvertent side-effect of recent changes to the forums...
Originally Posted by bonesTdog 
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real time.
Just remember, Semper Gumbi - always be flexible!
- 10-30-2011 #9Just Joined!
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Ok, thanks. Feeling slightly smarter now.
- 10-30-2011 #10Super Moderator
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Glad you got everything sorted to your liking. I've marked this thread as solved and closed.
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