Objective: List running processes on Linux and sort them by memory usage.
To view running processes, we use the ps command. To list processes together with memory utilisation / usage, run ps command with the following syntax.
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$ ps aux |
To sort the processes according to memory usage, I was initially using the following syntax, which is the wrong way.
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$ ps aux | sort -nrk 4 root 2322 0.0 6.3 51132 16072 tty7 Ss+ 14:29 0:00 /usr/bin/Xorg :0 -br -verbose -novtswitch -auth /var/run/gdm3/auth-for-Debian-gdm-HF0ZwT/database -nolisten tcp vt7 123 2794 0.0 6.0 56528 15236 ? Sl 14:29 0:00 /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-simple-greeter 123 2667 0.0 5.5 141436 14008 ? Sl 14:29 0:00 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon 123 2791 0.0 4.0 52784 10160 ? Sl 14:29 0:00 metacity 123 2620 0.0 3.5 49200 9064 ? Ssl 14:29 0:00 /usr/bin/gnome-session -f --start /usr/share/gdm/greeter/autostart --debug |
The output of ps is sorted based on the 4th field (memory usage field). Note that the header field is no longer available.
The proper way to sort based on memory usage is by using the following syntax. Processes with the largest RSS sizes will be at the top.
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$ ps aux --sort -rss USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 2322 0.0 6.3 51132 16072 tty7 Ss+ 14:29 0:00 /usr/bin/Xorg :0 -br -verbose -novtswitch -auth /var/run/gdm3/auth-for-Debian-gdm-HF0ZwT/data 123 2794 0.0 6.0 56528 15236 ? Sl 14:29 0:00 /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-simple-greeter 123 2667 0.0 5.5 141436 14008 ? Sl 14:29 0:00 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon 123 2791 0.0 4.0 52784 10160 ? Sl 14:29 0:00 metacity 123 2620 0.0 3.5 49200 9064 ? Ssl 14:29 0:00 /usr/bin/gnome-session -f --start /usr/share/gdm/greeter/autostart --debug |
To sort in reverse order, that is to print processes with the largest RSS value at the bottom, use the following syntax. The “-rss” option has to be replaced with “rss“.
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$ ps aux --sort rss USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 14:29 0:00 [kthreadd] root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 14:29 0:00 [ksoftirqd/0] root 5 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< 14:29 0:00 [kworker/0:0H] root 6 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 14:29 0:00 [kworker/u2:0] root 7 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 14:29 0:00 [rcu_sched] |
Mohamed Ibrahim
ibrahim = { interested_in(unix, linux, android, open_source, reverse_engineering); coding(c, shell, php, python, java, javascript, nodejs, react); plays_on(xbox, ps4); linux_desktop_user(true); }
