Bug 47114 – Gnome system monitor 2.4 gives false RAM usage information

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

[Description Alexandre Sanches 2004-04-07 09:27:53 UTC]

When using Gnome system monitor, it gives me a false value for RAM usage, much too low but not directly proportional to the true value.
Example : if I open a terminal or a ksysguard now, with my computer running and heavily used since this morning, I see near 509000 kB of RAM occupied on my 512 MB, and the gnome-system-monitor gives me 179 MB.
My kernel is 2.4.25-gentoo, but it's all the same with other versions. I did not try 2.6 kernels, but since I have seen that other applications have no problems getting the good RAM occupation value, I do not think there is any relation with that.
It seems POSSIBLE that the system monitor shows only what is is ksysguard as applications memory, "forgetting" buffered and cache data.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.




Portage 2.0.50-r3 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.3.2, glibc-2.3.2-r9, 2.4.25-gentoo)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.4.25-gentoo i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1600+
Gentoo Base System version 1.4.3.13
Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.58-r1
Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.3
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CFLAGS="-pipe -march=athlon-xp -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -funroll-loops"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
COMPILER="gcc3"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /etc/tomcat /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config
/usr/kde/3.2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref
/usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/
/usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/
/usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/bind
/var/qmail/control"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d"
CXXFLAGS="-pipe -march=athlon-xp -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -funroll-loops"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache sandbox"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/
http://212.219.247.21/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/
http://212.219.247.20/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/
http://212.219.247.19/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/
http://212.219.247.18/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY=""
SYNC="rsync://rsync.fr.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="3dnow X aalib alsa apm arts avi berkdb bonobo cdr crypt cups dga directfb
doc dvd encode esd faad fbcon flac foomaticdb gdbm ggi gif gnome gnomedb gphoto2
gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 gtkhtml guile imlib java jpeg kde ldap libg++ libgda
libwww linguas_fr mad matroska mikmod mmx motif mozilla mpeg mysql ncurses nls
odbc oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl pic png postgres python qt quicktime
readline sdl slang speex spell sse ssl svga tcltk tcpd tetex threads tiff
truetype v4l video_cards_rage128 wmf wxwindows x86 xml xml2 xmms xosd xv xvid zlib"

[Comment 1 foser (RETIRED) 2004-04-08 11:47:36 UTC]

this is fixed in newer versions, won't be fixed in this version.