[PLUG] Memory usage TOP vs ps

Daniel.Roberts at sanofi-aventis.com Daniel.Roberts at sanofi-aventis.com
Wed May 20 17:53:29 UTC 2009


Hi All
I am trying to determine the amount of RAM a whole series of procs take
up on my system..
So when I use unix top command for instance..I see that my system has
100GB RAM and 30GB Free..
Then playing around with top ordering I can see which PID is using the
most amount of RAM..

Now when I use the unix ps command such as ps -elf I get a listing of
every single process running in the system and when I sum up the SZ
column of all the PIDS that are returned I get aprox. 40GB in use by the
system.  If I use the top numbers I should have about 70GB of RAM in
use, but via the ps method I can only "locate" about 40 GB is use.  I
don't expect these two methods to give exactly the same results but I am
surprised that they are 30GB about in value!
Might anyone out there offer me some clues on how to better understand
where the 30GB of RAM happens to be in "use"?!
Thanks!
Dan



More information about the PLUG mailing list