is my ram usage natural? (clean ubuntu install by vps provider)

Question

I'm still a Linux beginner, but for my university project I had to rent a vps. When I got my vps, free -m shows me that it is already using 175 mb of 2gb. I wanted to ask that is this normal? googling shows me that a clean install of Ubuntu (server), takes up only 40-50 megs of the ram, but my system is using 175 mb already, and I still haven't done anything on it. (when I did apt-get update and apt-get upgrade, my usage went up to 230mb, but I think that's normal for the package manager)

I'm running Ubuntu 12.0.4, and here's my free -m:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          2016        203       1813          0         12        155
-/+ buffers/cache:         34       1981
Swap:          509          0        509

and here is my top: http://pastie.org/8610355

and here is lsmod:

Module                  Size  Used by
psmouse                82769  0 
serio_raw              13031  0 
coretemp               13324  0 
ppdev                  12849  0 
vmw_balloon            12700  0 
microcode              18433  0 
i2c_piix4              13227  0 
vmwgfx                115982  0 
ttm                    76149  1 vmwgfx
drm                   233935  2 vmwgfx,ttm
parport_pc             27612  1 
shpchp                 32265  0 
mac_hid                13077  0 
lp                     17455  0 
parport                40930  3 ppdev,parport_pc,lp
floppy                 60183  0 
e1000                 106020  0 
mptspi                 22474  2 
mptscsih               39532  1 mptspi
mptbase                96852  2 mptspi,mptscsih

Thanks for any help, and clearing some confusions.

you got 2 GB of RAM and you think it's strange that the system uses a 100MB more than you've seen on other systems? you still got 1.5 GB of RAM unused, start being worried of that wasted RAM instead. — Alvar, Jan 07 '14 at 16:16
..just a little infobit; you can sort the the columns of the top command output. — rusty, Jan 07 '14 at 16:56
use @hash's tip to sort by the 'VIRT' column in top to see what's using RAM. Among other things, ssh, bash, and top are adding 40MB of usage because you are logged in. — ImaginaryRobots, Jan 07 '14 at 17:32
It doesn't say you are using 175 mb; it says you are using 34. — psusi, Jan 07 '14 at 18:23
You may want to read linux ate my RAM for further explanations. — guntbert, Jan 07 '14 at 21:38
thank you guys.. the other day I checked my ram usage and it was 85% full. then I checked the link which guntbert put, and found out what was the reason. cheers. — Parsa, Jan 27 '14 at 12:00

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 07 '14 at 16:27

2

100Mb out of 2Gb of Ram is about 5% usage - it would probably be fine even if it was using 90% - even if it was 100%, it should use any swap space that is available

The desktop environments themselves use up to 500Mb (½Gb), and any programs that are running use it as well on top of that.

It should be fine - don't worry about it smiley

answered Jan 07 '14 at 16:27

Wilf

30,194
17
108
164

+1 for telling us about how much a typical desktop GUI uses. I suppose Windows each much more RAM than Ubuntu? – ankush981 Jul 02 '16 at 17:14

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 07 '14 at 19:01

0

When I add up the lsmod figures

82,769
13,031
13,324
12,849
12,700
18,433
13,227
115,982
76,149
233,935
27,612
32,265
13,077
17,455
40,930
60,183
106,020
22,474
39,532
96,852

I get 1,048,799 bytes of RAM used.

If you could edit your question to show your source on normal Ubuntu Server 12.04 RAM consumption, I could verify that, but using 1 GB of RAM is very normal on my servers at rest.

answered Jan 07 '14 at 19:01

K7AAY

17,202

Either you have a very busy server or you are misinterpreting something. free -m shows 145 MB used on my server. It is the -/+ buffers cache line you need to pay attention to. – psusi Jan 08 '14 at 19:21

is my ram usage natural? (clean ubuntu install by vps provider)

2 Answers2