XOrg Using Too Much Memory

[seanpr]

I recently installed Kubuntu 8.04 Kde3 version with wubi yesterday. Everything has been fine except I've noticed Xorg is using a large amount of memory. When I check System Guard it says it is using 836 MB lot memory (the VmSize category). I'm pretty sure this is an unusual amount of memory being used. I had Compiz installed but I've turned off all of the effects. I also had the Nvidia driver installed for my Geforce 8600M Gt video card on my laptop. Could the driver not be working with my video card? Any help would be great. Thanks

[dibl]

Re: XOrg Using Too Much Memory

I'm not experienced with Wubi installations, but I think what you are seeing is the TOTAL memory consumed by Kubuntu, including all running processes. Right? So that's not abnormal, if you're running a proprietary video driver and maybe a fairly large display.

[seanpr]

Re: XOrg Using Too Much Memory

wubi pretty much just installs Kubuntu in a folder on one of my hard drives inside windows. It is then booted into on startup like a partition. The total memory being taken is actually 1.3GB out of 2GB, 836MB is what is taken up specifically by xorg

[dibl]

Re: XOrg Using Too Much Memory

Yeah, it sounds like a lot for just xorg. But, Windows memory management is very different than Linux memory management, within Windows, it is Windows that is doing the memory management. So..... I dunno. I have not heard of a "how to tweak xorg memory consumption" technique -- it isn't normally an issue.

[Snowhog]

Re: XOrg Using Too Much Memory

From running top on my HH system:

Tasks: 127 total,  1 running, 126 sleeping,  0 stopped,  0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.8%us, 0.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem:  1025816k total,  893232k used,  132584k free,  101424k buffers
Swap: 2096440k total,    0k used, 2096440k free,  360944k cached

 PID USER   PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM  TIME+ COMMAND
 6422 root   20  0 466m 114m 5452 S  1 11.4 15:13.79 Xorg

What you care about is the %MEM that is being reported for Xorg:

%MEM -- Memory usage (RES)
A task’s currently used share of available physical memory.

When you run top, is it showing %MEM for Xorg as 8.36 or something else?

[seanpr]

Re: XOrg Using Too Much Memory

Below is the output of running top. If xorg is only 2.2% why do I still have such a vast amount of memory being taken up?

Mem:  2074564k total, 1591656k used,  482908k free,  518492k buffers
Swap:  976552k total,    0k used,  976552k free,  826460k cached

 PID USER   PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM  TIME+ COMMAND
 5350 root   20  0 827m 44m 5200 S  3 2.2 21:41.14 Xorg
13416 sean   20  0 33236 14m 11m S  2 0.7  0:00.44 konsole
 6134 sean   20  0 32952 13m 10m S  1 0.7  0:02.26 kdesktop
 6136 sean   20  0 39152 21m 16m S  1 1.1  0:14.30 kicker
 6241 sean   20  0 29412 10m 8164 S  1 0.5  0:01.02 klipper
  1 root   20  0 2844 1692 544 S  0 0.1  0:01.54 init
  2 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S  0 0.0  0:00.00 kthreadd
  3 root   RT -5   0  0  0 S  0 0.0  0:00.02 migration/0
  4 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S  0 0.0  0:00.54 ksoftirqd/0
  5 root   RT -5   0  0  0 S  0 0.0  0:00.00 watchdog/0
  6 root   RT -5   0  0  0 S  0 0.0  0:00.00 migration/1
  7 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S  0 0.0  0:00.06 ksoftirqd/1
  8 root   RT -5   0  0  0 S  0 0.0  0:00.00 watchdog/1
  9 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S  0 0.0  0:00.06 events/0
  10 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S  0 0.0  0:00.06 events/1
  11 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S  0 0.0  0:00.00 khelper
  47 root   15 -5   0  0  0 S  0 0.0  0:00.02 kblockd/0

[Snowhog]

Re: XOrg Using Too Much Memory

You need to thing about memory differently in Linux vs Windoze. In Linux, unused memory is wasted memory. One would be more concerned if the CPU useage/load was 'high.'

[seanpr]

Re: XOrg Using Too Much Memory

So should I not worry about so much memory being used? I wouldn't say my system is slow at the moment but I've had it perform faster before.

[Snowhog]

Re: XOrg Using Too Much Memory

Slowness could be due to background processes, or any number of other things. But, based on the output of TOP, Xorg isn't a problem, nor is it consuming much of the CPU (only 1%).