I'm working on an embedded Linux system (128MB RAM) without any swap partition. Below is its top output:
Mem: 37824K used, 88564K free, 0K shrd, 0K buff, 23468K cached
CPU: 0% usr 0% sys 0% nic 60% idle 0% io 38% irq 0% sirq
Load average: 0.00 0.09 0.26 1/50 1081
PID PPID USER STAT VSZ %MEM CPU %CPU COMMAND
1010 1 root S 2464 2% 0 8% -/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 115200 vt10
1081 1079 root R 2572 2% 0 1% top
5 2 root RW< 0 0% 0 1% [events/0]
1074 994 root S 7176 6% 0 0% sshd: root@ttyp0
1019 1 root S 13760 11% 0 0% /SecuriWAN/mi
886 1 root S 138m 112% 0 0% /usr/bin/rstpd 51234 <== 112% MEM?!?
1011 994 root S 7176 6% 0 0% sshd: root@ttyp2
994 1 root S 4616 4% 0 0% /usr/sbin/sshd
1067 1030 root S 4572 4% 0 0% ssh passive
932 1 root S 4056 3% 0 0% /sbin/ntpd -g -c /etc/ntp.conf
1021 1 root S 4032 3% 0 0% /SecuriWAN/HwClockSetter
944 1 root S 2680 2% 0 0% dbus-daemon --config-file=/etc/db
1030 1011 root S 2572 2% 0 0% -sh
1079 1074 root S 2572 2% 0 0% -sh
1 0 root S 2460 2% 0 0% init
850 1 root S 2460 2% 0 0% syslogd -m 0 -s 2000 -b 2 -O /var
860 1 root S 2460 2% 0 0% klogd -c 6
963 1 root S 2184 2% 0 0% /usr/bin/vsftpd /etc/vsftpd.conf
3 2 root SW< 0 0% 0 0% [ksoftirqd/0]
823 2 root SWN 0 0% 0 0% [jffs2_gcd_mtd6]
ps (which doesn't understand any options besides -w on busybox) shows:
PID USER VSZ STAT COMMAND
1 root 2460 S init
2 root 0 SW< [kthreadd]
3 root 0 SW< [ksoftirqd/0]
4 root 0 SW< [watchdog/0]
5 root 0 SW< [events/0]
6 root 0 SW< [khelper]
37 root 0 SW< [kblockd/0]
90 root 0 SW [pdflush]
91 root 0 SW [pdflush]
92 root 0 SW< [kswapd0]
137 root 0 SW< [aio/0]
146 root 0 SW< [nfsiod]
761 root 0 SW< [mtdblockd]
819 root 0 SW< [rpciod/0]
823 root 0 SWN [jffs2_gcd_mtd6]
850 root 2460 S syslogd -m 0 -s 2000 -b 2 -O /var/log/syslog
860 root 2460 S klogd -c 6
886 root 138m S /usr/bin/rstpd 51234
945 root 2680 S dbus-daemon --config-file=/etc/dbus-system.conf --for
964 root 2184 S /usr/bin/vsftpd /etc/vsftpd.conf
984 root 4616 S /usr/sbin/sshd
987 root 952 S /sbin/udhcpd /ftp/dhcpd.conf
1002 root 4056 S /sbin/ntpd -g -c /ftp/ntp.conf
1022 root 2464 S -/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 115200 vt102
1023 root 7176 S sshd: root@ttyp0
1028 root 2572 S -sh
1030 root 2572 R ps
When you look at process 886, you see that it uses 112% of the availble memory and has VSZ (virtual memory size) of 138MB. That doesn't make any sense to me.
In the top man page it says:
%MEM — Memory usage (RES)
A task's currently used share of available physical memory.
How can this process consume more than 100% memory?
And if it's such a memory hog, why are there still 88564K RAM free on the system?
Best Answer
The man page you refer to comes from the procps version of top.
But you're on an embedded system, so you have the busybox version of top.
It looks like busybox top calculates
%MEM
asVSZ
/MemTotal
instead ofRSS
/MemTotal
.The latest version of busybox calls that column
%VSZ
to avoid some confusion. commit log