What is using all memory?

[Cojones]

Hello,

I'm a bit confused because all memory is being used by some process but I don't know which one.

cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:      8168356 kB
MemFree:        125004 kB
Buffers:        357132 kB
Cached:        5688504 kB
SwapCached:          0 kB
Active:        6630264 kB
Inactive:       347792 kB
SwapTotal:     4198968 kB
SwapFree:      4197992 kB
Dirty:              32 kB
Writeback:           0 kB
AnonPages:      932400 kB
Mapped:          30776 kB
Slab:          1006116 kB
SReclaimable:   911528 kB
SUnreclaim:      94588 kB
PageTables:      21276 kB
NFS_Unstable:        0 kB
Bounce:              0 kB
WritebackTmp:        0 kB
CommitLimit:   8283144 kB
Committed_AS:  1495424 kB
VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed:    288236 kB
VmallocChunk: 34359450067 kB
HugePages_Total:     0
HugePages_Free:      0
HugePages_Rsvd:      0
HugePages_Surp:      0
Hugepagesize:     2048 kB

...but on the other hand ps doesn't show much memory usage at all

 ps aux --sort -rss
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root     21998  1.1  0.8 186040 67612 ?        Sl   13:03   0:21 /usr/bin/ruby1.8 /usr/bin/mongrel_rails
root      2068  1.1  0.8 187784 67272 ?        Sl   Jul31  63:42 /usr/bin/ruby1.8 /usr/bin/mongrel_rails
root      4087  0.9  0.7 140224 63832 ?        Sl   Jul23 167:58 /usr/bin/ruby1.8 /usr/bin/mongrel_rails
root      4084  1.0  0.7 139824 63584 ?        Sl   Jul23 181:10 /usr/bin/ruby1.8 /usr/bin/mongrel_rails
root     20319  1.1  0.7 137068 60604 ?        Sl   Jul07 450:24 /usr/bin/ruby1.8 /usr/bin/mongrel_rails
root     20322  1.0  0.7 136992 60560 ?        Sl   Jul07 419:06 /usr/bin/ruby1.8 /usr/bin/mongrel_rails
root     20273  1.0  0.6 176236 55676 ?        Sl   Jul07 431:44 /usr/bin/ruby1.8 /usr/bin/mongrel_rails
root     20276  1.0  0.6 176092 55664 ?        Sl   Jul07 417:42 /usr/bin/ruby1.8 /usr/bin/mongrel_rails
root     13457  0.9  0.6 150196 54460 ?        Sl   Jul23 160:00 ruby script/server -p8600 -d
mysql    27520  0.0  0.5 231496 47052 ?        Sl   Jul22  10:59 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/usr --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql --pid-file=/var/run/my
usr2028   17300  0.0  0.3 137720 27044 ?        S    Jul06   0:40 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
usr2028   17301  0.0  0.3 137528 26916 ?        S    Jul06   0:52 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
usr2030   21622  0.0  0.3 136452 25468 ?        S    12:30   0:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
usr2028    3306  0.0  0.2 135008 24116 ?        S    09:07   0:03 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
usr2028    3307  0.1  0.2 132528 21756 ?        S    09:07   0:24 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
root     28801  0.0  0.2 214344 19272 ?        Ss   Jul22   0:59 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
usr2000    7220  0.1  0.2 129084 18256 ?        S    Aug03   1:27 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
usr2000    7219  0.1  0.2 129084 18248 ?        S    Aug03   1:28 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
www-data 22019  0.0  0.2 219536 17796 ?        S    13:04   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 22121  0.0  0.2 219532 17776 ?        S    13:20   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 22024  0.0  0.2 219492 17704 ?        S    13:04   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 22014  0.0  0.2 219420 17688 ?        S    13:04   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 22118  0.0  0.2 219480 17556 ?        S    13:20   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 22023  0.0  0.2 219480 17532 ?        S    13:04   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 22122  0.0  0.2 219428 17496 ?        S    13:20   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 22119  0.0  0.2 219296 17472 ?        S    13:20   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 22117  0.0  0.2 218956 17072 ?        S    13:20   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 22925  0.0  0.2 218956 17072 ?        S    13:31   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 18423  0.0  0.1 164444 13600 ?        S    Aug02   0:03 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
usr2022   18451  0.0  0.1 124420 13512 ?        S    Aug02   1:07 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
usr2022   18452  0.0  0.1 122332 13084 ?        S    Aug02   1:08 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
bind     18469  0.0  0.1 123608 12996 ?        Ssl  Jul23   0:05 /usr/sbin/named -u bind
postgrey  2538  0.0  0.1  57100 12748 ?        Ss   Jun01   3:06 /usr/sbin/postgrey --pidfile=/var/run/postgrey.pid --daemonize --inet=127.0.0.1:60000
polw      2520  0.0  0.1  48492 10520 ?        Ss   Jun01   2:00 policyd-weight (cache)
usr2027   24828  0.0  0.1 119356  9848 ?        S    Jul06   0:06 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
usr2027   24022  0.0  0.1 119356  9784 ?        S    Jul06   0:11 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
polw     28309  0.0  0.1  47000  9604 ?        S    Jun03   8:00 policyd-weight (child)
polw      1371  0.0  0.1  47012  9600 ?        S    Jun02   8:33 policyd-weight (child)
polw      5466  0.0  0.1  46876  9376 ?        S    Jul05   3:42 policyd-weight (child)
polw      2518  0.0  0.1  46488  8736 ?        Ss   Jun01   4:05 policyd-weight (master)
root      2760  0.0  0.1  58160  8344 ?        Ss   Jun01   0:42 /usr/bin/perl /usr/share/webmin/miniserv.pl /etc/webmin/miniserv.conf
usr2020   11325  0.0  0.0 115764  7528 ?        Ss   Aug03   0:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
usr2001   18467  0.0  0.0 115764  7528 ?        Ss   Aug02   0:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
usr2030   21621  0.0  0.0 115764  7528 ?        Ss   12:30   0:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
usr2028    3305  0.0  0.0 115764  7524 ?        Ss   09:07   0:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
usr2000    7218  0.0  0.0 115764  7524 ?        Ss   Aug03   0:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
usr2012   14199  0.0  0.0 115764  7524 ?        Ss   Aug03   0:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi

Anyone knows what's going on there?

[kelmos]

Hi,

Have you tried checking under top? You can install "htop" and run that. With htop you can sort by cpu usage and mem usage etc. See what results you get from there.

Cheers,
K

[Cojones]

Well, htop shows 2006/7976MB memory usage and about the same MEM% as ps but how come /proc/meminfo shows a full memory and htop only 2GB/8GB?

[kelmos]

It seems that /proc/meminfo is giving the incorrect info as I've just checked mine, and it also shows that I only have +-126mb free of 2048mb., but according to top/htop, I have 50% free.

[Cojones]

Alright so I guess I'll just ignore meminfo then. Thanks