X using too much memory?

Quok · n00b Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 1 Location: Kansas, USA

I was just wondering how much memory X is using on other people's machines; it seems to be using WAY too much memory here, even after shutting down X and restarting it, or rebooting entirely. Currently, my machine has been up for 3 days, and here's the output of `ps aux | grep X`
root 962 0.0 3.0 323824 23816 ? S Dec01 4:22 /usr/X11R6/bin/X -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-NaHLGB

the 2 numbers after the 3.0 (SIZE and RSS) are what I'm interested. 23.8M of RSS seems reasonable, but what's up with the 323M under SIZE?? I'm running X 4.2.1 and KDE 3.1 RC2 with the closed-source Nvidia drivers. Machine specs are: Athlon XP 1700+, 768MB RAM, 120GB HD.

I've seen similar issues with X on Gentoo boxes at work, also running Athlon chips, 256 - 512MB RAM, KDE 3.x, and X 4.2 and 4.2.1.

Anyone have any ideas?

JeroenV · Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 1:19 am Post subject:

I'm experiencing the same here

I haven't really investigated this matter, but have some ideas:

Maybe some X-expert can verify/explain the above :?:

Thanks

_________________
Cheers

Jeroen
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
May The Source be with you!

MBCook · Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 2:54 am Post subject:

I'm not at my box, but I think that it's shared memory. Things like the shared graphics card memory, framebuffer, paged out data, etc. Can anyone confirm any of this?
_________________
-- Michael

Read an intelligent book like "The New Thought Police" or "The War Against Boys", and learn the TRUTH.

ebrostig · Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 3:11 am Post subject:

frogger · n00b Joined: 05 Dec 2002 Posts: 35

X tends to grab a lot of memory if you have it available (e.g. other programs aren't using it). I believe video memory is also included in the memory listing for X.

However, this memory should be freed as necessary if it is required by other applications.

Here is my output of ps aux:
root 25812 1.0 2.9 288368 15060 ? S 15:35 4:54 X :0

I believe RSS (the 15060 number) is a better indication of how much memory is ACTUALLY being used by X, as opposed to VSZ (288368), which includes all the cache, etc.

JeroenV · Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 9:34 am Post subject:

Hm, the numbers just don't match

Check this out:

DArtagnan · Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 10:00 am Post subject:

JeroenV · Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 10:45 am Post subject:

Eh...

I tried... apparently it works when you put focus in the location-bar after you get that error and then press enter...
(Is that some sort of protection of my ISP :?:

That it will only allow non-local referrers for the toplevel index or something like that:?

Anyway, that should do the trick :wink:

_________________
Cheers

Jeroen
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
May The Source be with you!

pilla · Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 4:29 pm Post subject:

Older threads 'bout this subject:

XFree use a lot of memory

How much memory does your X take

bobo · n00b Joined: 18 Jul 2002 Posts: 10

According to top, my X always has a SIZE over 280MB (even with just twm running) but the RSS is generally 10-20MB.

Looking at the maps file for the xfree process (under /proc) it appears that there is 268MB mapped to /dev/nvidia0. I'm pretty convinced that X isn't using vast amounts of real memory, as the total VSZ reported by ps is tons more than my total VM and the RSS is more than my real memory.

Don't worry about it, hopefully smarter folk than I will eventually fix ps and top. I used to understand Linux memory management, but it's all horrible and complicated now.