On Sat, 17 Oct 2015, Marc Shapiro wrote:
When I do have to do a reboot I close down everything to a single
console running. I then run top and it only shows bash and top. Next
time I will run top and include root and daemon processes and see if
anything shows up. I am guessing that this is memory that Firefox was
using, but has forgotten about. If that is the case, is there a way to
free it up without doing a reboot?
[...]
5062 marc 20 0 7622m 5.3g 12m D 1.6 68.1 210:02.01 firefox
First off, firefox isn't something that Debian distributes. So odds are
that whatever version you're using is old and outdated, or you're using
a plugin or add-on which is buggy.
Secondly, in firefox or iceweasel, about:memory will show you want it is
doing and where it is spending its memory.
Finally, if you kill off the firefox process, it will stop using the
memory, and the memory will become free again without you doing
anything else.