Ubuntu – Is it normal for the memory usage to be 8gb

memory usage

I just upgraded to 11.10 and while there are a few problems that seem like they might have gone away (about 50% of the time I couldn't boot properly – haven't seen that happen yet), occasionally my computer slows to such a crawl as to be unusable.

This seems to be at least somewhat related to chromium as killing tabs does make it get a bit better, but I have 8 gig RAM! Sure I dedicate 4gb to a virtualbox vm, but the remaining 4 should be plenty. So keeping an eye on my system resources I see it pretty consistently looking like this:
All my memory is used!

And this is with only 3 chrome tabs alive, chat, and nothing else really running. Is this normal? What steps do I take to trace down issues? I'm primarily a windows/web developer with at best a tenuous understanding of Unix.

Best Answer

There is (Most times) a problem called memory leak in programs. Browsers like Chrome, Opera, IE, Firefox and others are known for this (Firefox was the king of it until recent versions). Leaving Chrome/Chromium, even without doing anything on them after checking several pages will slowly start to increase the memory usage for "no apparent recent". The memory leak increases or has a bigger chance to increase (And increase faster) if the application you use uses more memory. In your case you have also Virtualbox and even if I set virtualbox to a guest of 1GB, about 30 minutes later you will see that the 1GB just went to 1.2GB, then 1.4GB and so on. This is just common bugs that need fixing. The same goes for Nautilus and any other app that has a lot of activity.

Would be nice to know how long you had them opened. If it is less than an hour then there might be something really wrong there but if it is more then am sorry but it is something I have adapted to. Normally I close virtualbox every so often. Same for browsers.

This might not explain an almost 100% drain but if given enough time it will be the first reason.

Would also be nice to see top output, if you are using PAE on a 32 Bit Ubuntu with 8GB Ram or a 64 Bit and any other tools loading in the background.

INFO - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak (Did not know the actual term Memory Leak existed. I thought I have made the name up.)

Related Solutions

Memory Usage – How to Configure Ubuntu for Lightweight Low-Memory Usage

Kubuntu is really Ubuntu with a KDE desktop instead of GNOME. The lightest I know of is Lubuntu (lubuntu-dektop package) this is still running the same thing underneath Kubuntu and normal Ubuntu just with a lighter desktop.

Compiz – Lowering Compiz Memory Usage

It is rather difficult in my experience to lower the Compiz memory usage. The best thing I can suggest to lower the texture quality in the OpenGL plugin, but this won't change much afaik.

Another source of compiz memory increases can be memory leaks. This seems to sometimes be triggered by indicators, but can be from other sources as well (not sure of them yet).

My solution as been to periodically restart unity, using a simple script that contains:

#kill compiz completely, including all child processes, freeing it's memory:
killall -9 compiz & 
#run unity and give you back a free terminal.
unity & disown

I know this isn't the best of answers, so I'm following this question myself to see if anyone has better tips.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Memory Usage – How to Configure Ubuntu for Lightweight Low-Memory Usage

Compiz – Lowering Compiz Memory Usage

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