On Monday 13 February 2006 02:39, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I also notice that if I start 5 galeon browser windows, I get 6 galeon > processes each using 34.4% memory (another 200% memory used). > > The man page for top says "%MEM The task's share of the physical memory". > > None of these numbers add up, for me! Even if I assume the man page is > wrong, and it should say "%MEM The task's share of the physical memory, > except when the process that's listed is sharing memory with others."
You need to forget your windows-centric view of memory as a commodity. Try xosview to see the global view of your memory usage. Processes ALWAYS share memory with others (but eg: ash is built to not use shared libs). Some processes show memory usage that is actually swap. Imagine the confusion: John runs top on TheProg and finds its memory usage goes from 100M down to 10M as swap gets used. Jane runs top on TheProg and finds its memory usage goes from 100M to 250M !! Top lets me examine a process, not (try) to do system accounting Frankly there is no such thing as 90% memory used. 90% of memory should ALWAYS be used, if not you have a faulty system. So I guess the question should be 'what are you trying to measure'. For me your galeon example is exactly what I'd expect to see. This is useful info, and no doubt exactly what top is designed to display. James -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
