The "iGoogle bug"

[Pádraig Brady]

Bernardo Innocenti wrote:
> Jim Gettys wrote:
> 
> 
>> Don't confuse virtual address space used with RAM consumed: most of that
>> is shared memory (glibc, pango, gtk+....).
>>
>> That's why memphis was written and is in our build: ps gives very
>> misleading memory usage statistics, unless you really understand what it
>> is reporting.  It does a bit better job accounting for memory used in a
>> mere-mortal way to understand.
> 
> This gives even better results:
> 
>  http://lwn.net/Articles/230975/
>  http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/042407-kernel.html
> 
> The PSS and USS are are the Right Thing: they give users and
> developers a honest and accurate figure.
> 
> The downside is that it would require a very fresh kernel or 13
> invasive VM patches.
> 

I've just updated my ps_mem.py tool to use PSS when available:
http://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/ps_mem.py

cheers,
Pádraig.