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    #1

    Kubuntu 11.10 gradually uses a lot of RAM and Swap

    Since installing Kubuntu about two months ago, I keep noticing that it gradually uses more and more RAM and also swap. I've noticed when it gets to using about 2 or 2.5 Gb then it also uses swap at an increasing rate. Today it got up to 3.4 GB of my 4 Gb of RAM and was using 1 Gb of swap. I've almost never had any Ubuntu-based distro use swap, or anywhere near that much RAM! The system then slows down a bit, and all I'm doing is browsing the internet and maybe watching a video online. I have to reboot almost weekly and then it's back to using about 0.7 Gb of RAM for a brief time.
    This doesn't seen normal. What can I do?

    AMD Athlon II X2 255 Processor
    4 GB DDR3 memory
    (2 Gb swap)
    "Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
    Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself."
    Tags: None
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    #2
    What does top in a terminal or System Activity (Ctrl+Esc) show is eating your RAM?
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      #3
      Top in Terminal says Firefox:12%; Knotify: 8%; Xorg: 9.1%;Kwin: 3%; Plasma Desktop: 3% and a few other processes under 1% each. When I check the System Monitor widget from the panel it now reads 1.7 Gb total RAM being used. No swap so far, but after a few days the RAM usage increases. I'll have to try Top tomorrow and see if it's much different. I didn't know about using top in the terminal; thanks!
      "Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
      Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself."
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        #4
        what is the output of
        Code:
        cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
        Loka samastha sukhino bhavanthu
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          #5
          Possibly, something on your system has a memory leak. Finding these, without source code, can be difficult. It'll be interesting to see what top shows after the next day.
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            #6
            Originally posted by r View Post
            what is the output of
            Code:
            cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
            "60"
            "Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
            Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself."
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              #7
              Originally posted by SteveRiley View Post
              Possibly, something on your system has a memory leak. Finding these, without source code, can be difficult. It'll be interesting to see what top shows after the next day.
              Today RAM usage is up to 2.0 Gb, according to system monitor. When I check top Xorg is using 8.8%; then Firefox 7%; Knotify and Plasma-desktop & Kwin all around 3.5%. Also the other user account (my wife's) shows Knotify around 2 or 3%. No swap being used at the moment.
              I've got to find out how to detect a memory leak and what I can do about it.
              "Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
              Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself."
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                #8
                I find the same thing. To the extent that sometimes it feels like Kubuntu is turning into Windows.

                Firefox is a memory hog for sure, but if I restart it from time to time other processes still climb up the rankings: Xorg, kwin and plasma-desktop. I rebooted today so they're still pretty low, but over several days can easily climb to several 100 MBs. (I don't recall knotify ever being high in the list.)

                Use of swap on my machine is very slow, but I generally manage to avoid it.
                Code:
                $ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          3961       2364       1596          0         58        546
-/+ buffers/cache:       1759       2201
Swap:         4102        275       3826
                Code:
                $ cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
60
                I'd rather be locked out than locked in.
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                  #9
                  Hi all...

                  I don't think it's limited to Kubuntu, I'm running Ubuntu 10,04 and have found this...

                  Code:
                  $ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          3964       1804       2159          0         98        799
-/+ buffers/cache:        906       3057
Swap:        11611          0      11611
                  I'm not running anything special, either.

                  I did find this if it helps a little.

                  Regards...
                  Last edited by ardvark71; Mar 20, 2012, 02:18 PM. Reason: Added Information
                  Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ loves and cares about you most of all! http://peacewithgod.jesus.net/
                  How do I know this personally? Please read here: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...hn-8-12-36442/
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                    #10
                    Originally posted by SecretCode View Post
                    I find the same thing. To the extent that sometimes it feels like Kubuntu is turning into Windows.

                    Firefox is a memory hog for sure, but if I restart it from time to time other processes still climb up the rankings: Xorg, kwin and plasma-desktop. I rebooted today so they're still pretty low, but over several days can easily climb to several 100 MBs. (I don't recall knotify ever being high in the list.)

                    Use of swap on my machine is very slow, but I generally manage to avoid it.
                    Code:
                    $ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          3961       2364       1596          0         58        546
-/+ buffers/cache:       1759       2201
Swap:         4102        275       3826
                    Code:
                    $ cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
60
                    I checked out valgrind but I don't think I know enough to be able to use it! I wish there was a gui app for this.
                    I just got this:
                    davey@davey-MS-7597:~$ free -m
                    total used free shared buffers cached
                    Mem: 3709 2064 1645 0 155 753
                    -/+ buffers/cache: 1155 2554
                    Swap: 3092 0 3092

                    Does this really mean my system is using almost 2 GB of RAM?! Sysytem monitor widget reports 1.1 GB (no... it just went up to 1.2 Gb in the past minute) This is kind of crazy! I'm only using Firefox and Konsole.
                    Could Firefox be that much of a problem?
                    "Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
                    Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself."
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                      #11
                      Originally posted by ardvark71 View Post
                      Hi all...

                      I don't think it's limited to Kubuntu, I'm running Ubuntu 10,04 and have found this...
                      My current free memory is not a problem. Not sure why I even posted the output!

                      I was using Ubuntu 10.10 for while (and 9.10 before that), and I didn't see this gradual increase in RAM usage.
                      I'd rather be locked out than locked in.
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                        #12
                        Originally posted by utherpendragonfly View Post
                        Does this really mean my system is using almost 2 GB of RAM?! Sysytem monitor widget reports 1.1 GB (no... it just went up to 1.2 Gb in the past minute) This is kind of crazy! I'm only using Firefox and Konsole.
                        Could Firefox be that much of a problem?
                        It means *thinks* you're using 1155MB of RAM - not including buffers and cache. Which is the value you should care about.

                        If you hit Ctrl-Esc, System Activity will show you the "Memory" for each process, and you can sort by it. Or, go to the command line and use htop; again you can sort by it (you want the RES column).
                        I'd rather be locked out than locked in.
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                          #13
                          I tried this:
                          sudo sysctl -w vm.swappiness=10
                          RAM usage is down to 1.1 Gb for now. I'll see what happens in the next few days...
                          "Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
                          Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself."
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                            #14
                            All with RAM issues, I'd like to see the output of the following command:
                            Code:
                            ps -e -o pid,comm,etime,time,%cpu,%mem,rss,vsz --sort -rss | head -n 6
                            What does it do? It shows the top 5 processes ordered by resident memory (rss), with details of how long it's been running, how much CPU it's used, and how much memory it's currently using.

                            Mine is:
                            Code:
                              PID COMMAND             ELAPSED     TIME %CPU %MEM   RSS    VSZ
 7633 firefox               08:34 00:01:18 15.3  8.6 352276 1181240
 1313 Xorg               19:37:33 00:24:49  2.1  4.7 191180 633384
 3491 thunderbird-bin    18:48:25 00:12:13  1.0  4.0 164672 1161148
 1947 kwin               19:37:14 00:18:55  1.6  3.0 121948 820724
 7661 soffice.bin           08:28 00:00:04  0.8  2.9 119100 770812
                            Which shows Firefox, Thunderbird and LibreOffice (soffice.bin) using average-to-low amounts of memory for complex apps. And Xorg and kwin using ... not too much yet.
                            I'd rather be locked out than locked in.
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                              #15
                              @utherpendragonfly:Changing the swap ratio will only help to reduce the swap usage , it wouldnt have any direct effect on ram usage.
                              try using a different browser and check if it really is a firefox problem
                              and i forgot to ask what is the ram status at startup
                              Last edited by r; Mar 21, 2012, 10:39 AM.
                              Loka samastha sukhino bhavanthu
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