[mythtv-users] Memory usage

[Ray Olszewski]

At 11:09 PM 4/10/2003 -0500, Nathan Poznick wrote:
>Thus spake Vincent Colombo:
> > Any idea what might be causing it and how I could go about fixing it?
>
>Out of curiosity, are you referring to the actual resident size of the
>mythtv process, or were you looking at the "Free" number on the Memory
>line in top?

This clarification involves more than curiosity ... especially now that 
others are jumping on this bandwagon.

The "top" entry, like the first line in "free", will over time always grow 
to close to 100% usage of physical (not swap) RAM, because that's the way 
the Linux kernel works. It leaves recently-used processes and files in 
memory, as buffers and cache, against the possibility that they will be 
used again (so can be run or accessed more quickly, since they don't need 
to be reloaded from comparatively slow disk). Every Linux system ... not 
just Myth ones ... works like that.

OTOH, if you see this unbounded growth in the Myth process itself, or on 
the second line of the output of "free" (the one that adjusts for cache and 
buffers), then you probably have a problem and should post the details.