Comment 7 for bug 1178943

On 12 May 2013 02:37, Jérôme <email address hidden> wrote:
> Below is the output of ps :
> ---
> j@lt:~$ ps axlf
> F UID PID PPID PRI NI VSZ RSS WCHAN STAT TTY TIME COMMAND
> (...)
> 1 0 812 1 20 0 2392 840 rt_sig Ss ? 0:00 anacron -s
> 0 0 1615 812 20 0 2232 520 wait S ? 0:00 \_ /bin/sh -c nice run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily
> 0 0 1616 1615 30 10 2140 520 poll_s SN ? 0:00 \_ run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily
> 0 0 1622 1616 30 10 2232 560 wait SN ? 0:00 \_ /bin/sh /etc/cron.daily/apt
> 0 0 1672 1622 30 10 2148 280 hrtime SN ? 0:00 \_ sleep 1307
> (...)
> ---
>
> This makes 11 MB of virtual memory and 3 MB of physical memory.
>
>

Virtual size (VSZ) and Resident Set Size (RSS) are not accurate
measures of the _unique_ memory consumed by a process. Processes
share memory e.g. for the executable image. Use a tool such as the
mem_usage script at
<http://www.elinux.org/Runtime_Memory_Measurement>. See also
<http://lwn.net/Articles/230975/>.

The unique memory size of that process tree is more on the order of
1–2 MB, and a system has any number of /bin/sh processes and all
sharing the same executable image. Further, a sleeping and nice
process is never a significant contributor to swapping, whose data is
swapped out and rarely in.

If this is causing measurable harm on your system you have many more
problems than one tiny, sleeping process. Submit a patch or dont, I
would not waste my time.

 status invalid