On 2015-10-13 at 10:26, Marc Shapiro wrote: > Is there a way to determine what is using up my memory? I have an > 8GB system and every few days the memory usage rises to over 7 GB and > up to a GB, or more of swap is used. Granted, I have 3 X sessions > running, along with 2 instances of Firefox and one of Chrome, not to > mention up to 3 instances of Libre Office, but... When I first added > the 8 GB (I used to do this on 2.25 GB!) I could run for months > without having a memory problem. Now it's every few days. > > When this happens, I exit all programs and shut down all three X > sessions. I also log out the other two users. This leaves me with > only a single login and nothing but bash running. When I run 'free' > it usually shows over 2 GB in use! When I reboot, the memory usage > is back down at about 250 MB. Much more reasonable. > > So how do I tell what is using up the memory and not freeing it up? My usual first stop is top. Launch it, then press 'M' (capitalized) to sort by memory usage; that will tell you what process(es) is(/are) using up the largest share(s) of the RAM. What the next steps are depends on what those processes are. In my case, with the last significant memory leak I found, the process was X, and further digging revealed that the X heap size was growing without limit; it turned out to be a problem with fglrx, and went away when I switched to the radeon drivers. In your case, since it apparently happens without X running, the only candidates I can think of are background (daemon-like) processes or the kernel itself. > Is there a way to free that memory without having to reboot? Depends what process(es) is/are using it. If it's a background daemon, restart that daemon. If it's the kernel, probably not, but it would be worth reporting the problem as a bug against the kernel. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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