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Friday, August 11, 2006

Linux memory usage explained

Since ps shows all memory mapped to a process, it's memory usage numbers are misleadingly high. This article explains why that '14 MB' editor isn't quite the big memory hog it would appear to be.

Depending on how you look at it, ps is not reporting the real memory usage of processes. What it is really doing is showing how much real memory each process would take up if it were the only process running. Of course, a typical Linux machine has several dozen processes running at any given time, which means that the VSZ and RSS numbers reported by ps are almost definitely "wrong". In order to understand why, it is necessary to learn how Linux handles shared libraries in programs.

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