Memory Leak Using Top

[Geert Janssens]

Butler, Thomas E. (US SSA) wrote:
> I ran the following test:
> 
> ...
 >
> What is observed is an initial RAM report on the order of 100 MB RAM, 
> but the final report after 12 hours, running nothing but top
> 
> Is 2 GigaBytes RAM, or 100% of the available RAM.  Does anyone know 
> anything about this apparent memory leak?
> 
You yourself only started top, but linux has a number of processes that 
run in the background, and another number that runs periodically.

Take that with an advanced caching mechanism, and you could get the 
situation you have.

Let me explain: linux is known to use available RAM for disk cache. As 
far as I know, the disk cache will fill all available memory, and is 
reduced if other processes require more memory. So if one of the 
processes running or that did run in the meantime had intensive disk 
activity (like the updatedb process run from time to time), your cache 
can grow quickly.

Cheers,

Geert Jan