Hi all, I'm trying to figure out how much memory some of my applications are gobbling up. Although the output of tools such as ps and top or cat /proc/<pid>/status give me heaps of numbers I am not sure which ones I ought to be looking at.
If some kind soul would explain (or give an RTFM hint) the meaning of and differences between ps aux: VSZ, RSS top : SIZE, RSS, SHARE /proc/<pid>/status: Vm* I would appreciate it. Just for reference some output for a single process (X server) bash-2.03$ ps aux USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 25513 0.2 3.8 13312 4844 ? S 14:09 0:01 /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_SVGA :1 bash-2.03$ top PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT LIB %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND 25513 root 0 0 11056 4844 1848 S 0 0.0 3.8 0:01 XF86_SVGA bash-2.03$ cat /proc/25513/status Name: XF86_SVGA State: S (sleeping) Pid: 25513 PPid: 25512 Uid: 0 0 0 0 Gid: 0 0 0 0 Groups: 0 VmSize: 13312 kB VmLck: 0 kB VmRSS: 4844 kB VmData: 2884 kB VmStk: 68 kB VmExe: 2764 kB VmLib: 1092 kB SigPnd: 0000000000000000 SigBlk: 0000000000000000 SigIgn: 8000000000301000 SigCgt: 00000000418046cb CapInh: 0000000000000000 CapPrm: 00000000fffffeff CapEff: 00000000fffffeff bash-2.03$ -- Olaf Meeuwissen Epson Kowa Corporation, Research and Development
