Memory ussage after default installation.

[ZeuZ]

Re: Memory ussage after default installation.

Well, I managed to solve that getting rid of the KDE session manager, wich lowered my memory usage from 700 (after getting rid of un-needed services and python apps at startup) to 250~ aproximately (1gb total ram, no swap used, and with Compiz-Fusion (GIT) and superkaramba (with 2 widgets) perhaps you could try the same...
Also disable the remote desktop, and get rid of the brltty (a tty for blind people) if you don't use it because it´s a huge memory dump (80~mb)
I think I could go on, and on but... I just still don't feel confortable with how Kubuntu manages memory, so, checking my Debian I found that /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches is set to 0, equal to Kubuntu, but setting it to 2 (possible values are 1,2 and 3 -- where 3 means aggresive) and also set swappiness to 20 (for laptops, that will let the disk spun down, saving you some battery also, and would rather prefer RAM memory that is faster than the SWAP virtual space...)
Hope that helps, those are my conclusions and achievements so far... I'll keep this updated, though...

[kubicle]

Re: Memory ussage after default installation.

I've 4 GB of RAM installed. It starts using 1 GB, and after a few hours working with Kubuntu it spends 2.5 - 3 GB aproximately (virtual memory at 0 KB always, even in heavy loads), with just the basic software running (the default services and background applications). Taking into account what's said here, it's normal because of that disk cache.

As long as you don't see a significant increase in SWAP size, everything is normal...the cache/buffers increase over time as long as there is free memory available.

Taking a look to the consumption of every process independently, I've seen that some of them show some crazy figures. For example, just opening Firefox, it starts with ~551 MB :S , KMix ~128 MB, and many other "simple" background processes with 100 ~ 200 MB. Is included in that count per process the disk cache? Is this disk cache stored per application, depending on the use which every one does of files?

I understand that Linux stores a cache, but my common sense says that it should be counted apart of the consumption of every app, Right?

System monitoring tools like top (or htop) and ksysguard typically report at least two values, VIRT (or VmSize) which is the virtual and physical memory usage, and RES (or VmRss) which is the physical memory usage. Even the resident memory (RES) value isn't entirely accurate as most applications commonly use memory that is shared among other applications, so if you add the RES values up, they show a lot higher memory usage that is the total physical memory usage.

These monitoring apps are therefore only good for general estimations of program memory usage, not exact tools.

EDIT: also firefox can be a bit of a memory hog, as it isn't a kde/qt application and therefore doesn't use the resident kde/qt libraries...even so, the numbers you're reporting seem high, are you sure you're reading the output correctly? (the memory values are generally reported as kilobytes)

Well, I managed to solve that getting rid of the KDE session manager, wich lowered my memory usage from 700 (after getting rid of un-needed services and python apps at startup) to 250~ aproximately (1gb total ram, no swap used, and with Compiz-Fusion (GIT) and superkaramba (with 2 widgets) perhaps you could try the same...
Also disable the remote desktop, and get rid of the brltty (a tty for blind people) if you don't use it because it´s a huge memory dump (80~mb)

If you haven't already done so, strigi (the desktop search backend) can also take up a fair amount of memory (and increase the cache size), so if you don't need it, removing it can also decrease memory footprint.

I think I could go on, and on but... I just still don't feel confortable with how Kubuntu manages memory, so, checking my Debian I found that /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches is set to 0, equal to Kubuntu, but setting it to 2 (possible values are 1,2 and 3 -- where 3 means aggresive)

I thought drop_caches is used to flush the cache (feeding 1,2 or 3 to it), after which it'll change to 0 again. Of course I can very well be wrong about that, I haven't had the need to use it myself.

[ZeuZ]

Re: Memory ussage after default installation.

Thing is I added vm.drop_caches 2 in the configuration file (same place where you can permanently change the swappiness, i don't remember the filename now) so it´s pretty aggresive in that manner now...
and thanks for the strigi tip, will do it a.s.a.p...

[negora]

Re: Memory ussage after default installation.

Kubicle: Oh, I see... Thank you very much for such an interesting information! I guess that I misunderstood the figures. I checked what you commented about the VmRss and yep, it's smaller than the mentioned VmSize. I'll wait for the final version of Kubuntu v. 8.04 to analize all this information deeper.

Thank you again .

[Jean]

Re: Memory ussage after default installation.

Fwiw I just checked mine, this is with only konsole running, but on ubuntu server so apache and mysql (and probably 'some other os stuff' (tm)) running too.

free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1011 779 231 0 141 339
-/+ buffers/cache: 298 713
Swap: 1655 0 1655

That's 779 mb just for konsole and os??
Do I have to worry?

Running opera with some 12 windows open, amsn, kate, krusader and some other stuff only makes it 783 used.

P.s. I'm still on gutsy but I am posting here because I want to get my feet wet.

523 Mb is quite a bit of memory used by applications, but probably due to the multitude of applications you're running (as a comparison, my kubuntu machine generally uses about 250 Mb out of 1,5 Gb if I'm not doing anything memory intensive)

[dibl]

Re: Memory ussage after default installation.

That's 779 mb just for konsole and os??

No, that's 298 just for konsole and OS. Read the earlier part of the thread where we clarified what "used" means, in Linux.

[Jean]

Re: Memory ussage after default installation.

hi dibl

No, that's 298 just for konsole and OS. Read the earlier part of the thread where we clarified what "used" means, in Linux.

I read this thread too quickly yes, cached counts as used, it's clear now.
Thanks.