The Unix Heritage Society mailing list
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Tomasz Rola <rtomek@ceti.pl>
To: "Michael Kjörling" <michael@kjorling.se>
Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Overgrown ffox (was: The Unix shell: a 50-year view)
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2021 08:46:53 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20210708064652.GA19675@tau1.ceti.pl> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <6b736f82-97ed-4e51-9652-e672be4e2c66@localhost>

On Wed, Jul 07, 2021 at 08:50:51PM +0000, Michael Kjörling wrote:
> On 7 Jul 2021 20:32 +0200, from rtomek@ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola):
> > An excerpt from my ps:
> > 
> > USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
> > 
> > xxxon    12331 12.5 20.4 5898360 2519640 ?     TNsl Mar29 18278:11 firefox-esr
> 
> I'm going to stick my neck out here by saying that the VSZ and RSS
> values reported by ps, at least for Firefox, are largely meaningless.
> 
> I started my usual Firefox instance, which has a handful of plugins,
> about a metric gazillion bookmarks, and has been my main web browser
> profile for years (so it probably has collected some crud over time).
> `ps auxw` reported that process as having a total RSS of a whopping
> 374 GB.
> 
> It is downright _impossible_ that Firefox could actually be using that

This is quite strange for me. Without looking at your system I can only
suspect it has something to do with multithreading.

If I do two different commands as root, with firefox pid here
.eq. 12331, as above:

=>  (500 15):    lsof -p 12331 | wc -l
402

=>  (500 17):   lsof | awk '$2==12331' | wc -l
22055

The first column gives a name, and in second case it not always is
'firefox'. I am yet to study manpage for lsof and play with it, but it
surely shows interesting things.

On my system, when firefox gets killed, 'free' shows a difference - if
I recall, free mem increases by the size of rss plus all the stuff
which was opened and released from buffers. I did not pay much
attention, I assumed numbers would match and this is what they
probably did :-).

OS on my box used to report to me as Debian, and still does, but some
years ago I have decided to skip the usual system upgrade, and after
some more time I started to upgrade various elements by hand. So it is
more like a tattered patchwork right now. But it does what I expect,
hopefully.

[...]
> That's a _factor almost 2300x_ difference between the reported RSS,
> and the amount of memory that was actually freed up by closing the
> browser.

Yeah, strange.

[...]
> On modern systems, with everything from shared libraries to
> memory-mapped I/O to routine use of memory overcommitting, the
> resident set size is clearly a poor indicator of the actual amount
> of memory actively used by a complex process.

Hard to tell - first I would like to learn where the hundred-giga rss
came from...

-- 
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola@bigfoot.com             **

  reply	other threads:[~2021-07-08  6:48 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 109+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-07-02 21:24 [TUHS] [tuhs] The Unix shell: a 50-year view Nelson H. F. Beebe
2021-07-02 21:36 ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-02 21:56   ` Henry Bent
2021-07-02 23:12     ` Steve Nickolas
2021-07-02 23:49       ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-03 13:34         ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-03 13:56           ` Richard Salz
2021-07-03 12:04       ` Thomas Paulsen
2021-07-03 13:20         ` Dan Cross
2021-07-03 17:37           ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-07-03 17:57             ` Warner Losh
2021-07-03 18:10               ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-07-03 20:02                 ` Dan Cross
2021-07-04  0:47           ` Tomasz Rola
2021-07-04  4:36             ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-04 14:56               ` Dan Cross
2021-07-04 16:07               ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-07-04 20:10               ` David Barto
2021-07-05  0:25                 ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-05  1:23                 ` John Cowan
2021-07-04 12:48             ` Dan Cross
2021-07-05  7:14               ` Tomasz Rola
2021-07-05 16:26                 ` John Cowan
2021-07-06 23:17                   ` Tomasz Rola
2021-07-06 23:47                     ` Steve Nickolas
2021-07-06 23:49                       ` Warner Losh
2021-07-06 23:48                     ` John Cowan
2021-07-07  0:46                     ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-07-07  0:58                       ` George Michaelson
2021-07-07  2:48                         ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-07 18:32                       ` Tomasz Rola
2021-07-07 20:50                         ` Michael Kjörling
2021-07-08  6:46                           ` Tomasz Rola [this message]
2021-07-08 13:59                             ` [TUHS] Overgrown ffox (was: The Unix shell: a 50-year view) Derek Fawcus
2021-07-08 19:25                               ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-08 19:37                                 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-08 20:40                                 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-08 22:23                             ` Kevin Bowling
2021-07-08 21:47                           ` [TUHS] [tuhs] The Unix shell: a 50-year view Theodore Ts'o
2021-07-09 20:14                             ` Michael Kjörling
2021-07-07 13:54                     ` Tony Finch
2021-07-06 16:05                 ` Clem Cole
2021-07-09 22:19                   ` Tomasz Rola
2021-07-04 20:10           ` Tony Finch
2021-07-05  3:59             ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-07-05 15:08               ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-05  3:52           ` Bakul Shah
2021-07-04 18:17     ` John Dow via TUHS
2021-07-04 19:46       ` Clem Cole
2021-07-05  1:33         ` Noel Hunt
2021-07-05  2:38           ` Clem Cole
2021-07-05  2:51             ` Warner Losh
2021-07-05  3:03               ` Clem Cole
2021-07-05  3:01             ` Clem Cole
2021-07-05  5:22             ` Noel Hunt
2021-07-06  5:10           ` Nevin Liber
2021-07-06 13:30             ` Clem Cole
2021-07-06 16:23               ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-07-07  1:57                 ` Dan Cross
2021-07-07  2:52                   ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-07  5:19                     ` Andrew Warkentin
2021-07-07 18:28                   ` Jon Steinhart
2021-07-10 11:51                     ` [TUHS] " Ralph Corderoy
2021-07-10 13:54                       ` Henry Bent
2021-07-10 14:12                         ` Ralph Corderoy
2021-07-10 16:57                           ` [TUHS] Death by bug [formerly The Unix shell: a 50-year view] Jon Steinhart
2021-07-11  8:53                             ` [TUHS] Death by bug Ralph Corderoy
2021-07-11  9:04                               ` arnold
2021-07-12  1:42                                 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2021-07-12  2:57                                   ` Jon Steinhart
2021-07-12  6:39                                   ` arnold
2021-07-12  9:56                                   ` Ralph Corderoy
2021-07-11 16:10                               ` Jon Steinhart
2021-07-12 10:37                                 ` Ralph Corderoy
2021-07-06 13:40             ` [TUHS] [tuhs] The Unix shell: a 50-year view John Cowan
2021-07-06 14:12             ` Chet Ramey
2021-07-07  0:53               ` Nevin Liber
2021-07-07 13:08                 ` Chet Ramey
2021-07-07 15:15                   ` Richard Salz
2021-07-03  0:09   ` Andrew Warkentin
2021-07-03 15:49   ` Andy Kosela
2021-07-04 23:24     ` [TUHS] Is C obsolete? (was Re: [tuhs] The Unix shell: a 50-year view) Derek Fawcus
2021-07-04 23:50       ` Nemo Nusquam
2021-07-05  0:15         ` Dan Stromberg
2021-07-05  0:21       ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-05  2:36         ` John Cowan
2021-07-05  2:59           ` Richard Salz
2021-07-05  3:47           ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-05  4:02             ` Dan Stromberg
2021-07-05 13:45               ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-05 20:15                 ` Dan Stromberg
2021-07-05 21:05                   ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-05 21:29                   ` Clem Cole
2021-07-05 22:22                     ` Brantley Coile
2021-07-06  4:35                     ` Dan Stromberg
2021-07-06  4:44                       ` Warner Losh
2021-07-06  5:58                       ` Rico Pajarola
2021-07-06 13:05                       ` Clem Cole
2021-07-05 12:11         ` Thomas Paulsen
2021-07-05  4:08       ` Dan Stromberg
2021-07-05  4:23         ` George Michaelson
2021-07-05 14:43           ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-05 15:17             ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-05 15:36               ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-05 15:53       ` Mike Markowski
2021-07-05 16:39       ` Warner Losh
2021-07-05 19:02         ` Clem Cole
2021-07-02 22:27 ` [TUHS] [tuhs] The Unix shell: a 50-year view Chet Ramey
2021-07-02 23:09 ` Steve Nickolas

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=20210708064652.GA19675@tau1.ceti.pl \
    --to=rtomek@ceti.pl \
    --cc=michael@kjorling.se \
    --cc=tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).