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Linux: find out what process is using all the RAM?

Fresh5 days ago
Mar 15, 2026428840 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

Before actually asking, just to be clear: yes, I know about disk cache, and no, it is not my case :) Sorry, for this preamble :) I'm using CentOS 5. Every application in the system is swapping heavily, and the system is very slow. When I do , here is what I got: So, I actually have only 42 Mb to use! As far as I understand, actually doesn't count the disk cache, so I indeed only have 42 Mb, right? I thought, I might be wrong, so I tried to switch off the disk caching and it had no effect - the picture remained the same. So, I decided to find out who is using all my RAM, and I used for that. But, apparently, it reports that no process is using my RAM. The only process in my top is MySQL, but it is using 0.1% of RAM and 400Mb of swap. Same picture when I try to run other services or applications - all go in swap, shows that MEM is not used (0.1% maximum for any process). Restart doesn't help, and, by they way is very slow, which I wouldn't normally expect on this machine (4 cores, 4Gb R…

Error Output

total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          3952       3929         22          0          1         18
-/+ buffers/cache:       3909         42
Swap:        16383         46      16337

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Fix for: Linux: find out what process is using all the RAM?

Low Risk

On Linux in the process you can press key to shift the output display sort left. By default it is sorted by the so if you press the key 4 times you will sort it by which is virtual memory size giving you your answer. Another way to do this is: should give you and output sorted by processes virtual size. Here's the long version:

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