Re: Question about free/used memory on Linux

["Pádraig Brady" <P@draigBrady.com>]

Ravinandan Arakali (rarakali) wrote:
> Hi Vaidy,
> What do you think is the right way to get the memory usage of a
> process, I mean the actual physical memory used ? Basically,
> I'm interested in the incremental cost of a process, which
> means, I don't want to include the text segments of shared
> libraries which would remain even after the process is killed
> (since it would be used by other processes).
> 
> Is the RSS field of "ps aux" command the right one or use 
> "pmap" command and look at the "writeable" segments ?

I already commented on this thread with a python script
for reporting RAM usage for programs.

RSS = Private and Shared Resident pages.
You can get the shared value for a process from /proc/$$/smaps
(as is done in the script)

Pádraig.