Score:-2

Why does the sum of my processes RAM usage not match the total?

af flag

When I look in gnome system monitor after a fresh boot, it says I am using 2.1 gb of RAM.

When I go into the processes tab, and sum the memory usage of all of the processes, it only totals to about 900mb.

Using htop it lists 1.9gb and free -h list 1.85 gb. All of these values are more than the value of 900mb.

What is using my RAM that is not listed in the process list in gnome system monitor?

Artur Meinild avatar
vn flag
An almost identical question was asked about a month ago, and has very detailed answers [here](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1439869/high-memory-usage-that-cannot-be-traced-to-a-service-or-application/).
Artur Meinild avatar
vn flag
Also, for starters, please list output of `free -m` in the terminal - this will give you the size of shared RAM also.
Artur Meinild avatar
vn flag
Also please include output of `ps aux | awk '{sum +=$6}END{print sum}'` - this is the exact sum of memory used by all processes.
Score:1
bo flag

Historically, the difference was that of cached RAM and actual available RAM, where available RAM was much higher than reported. Although, I think newer versions of System Monitor, free, and htop don't report cached RAM as "used".

I could be wrong but I believe the main difference between your processes tab (900 mb) and the others can be explained if you click the hotdog menu on the upper right hand side and select All Processes instead of My Processes.

enter image description here

Scorb avatar
af flag
This was half an answer. But there is still scenarios where there is a massive discrepency between used ram under resources, and used ram under processes.
Artur Meinild avatar
vn flag
@Scorb that's appropriate, since it's also only half a question. You still didn't provide the detailed outputs that I asked for.
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