How to see top processes sorted by actual memory usage?

Question

use quick tip using top command in linux/unix

$ top

and then hit Shift+m (i.e. write a capital M).

From man top

SORTING of task window
  For compatibility, this top supports most of the former top sort keys.
  Since this is primarily a service to former top users, these commands do
  not appear on any help screen.
    command   sorted-field                  supported
      A         start time (non-display)      No
      M         %MEM                          Yes
      N         PID                           Yes
      P         %CPU                          Yes
      T         TIME+                         Yes

Or alternatively: hit Shift + f , then choose the display to order by memory usage by hitting key n then press Enter. You will see active process ordered by memory usage

First, repeat this mantra for a little while: "unused memory is wasted memory". The Linux kernel keeps around huge amounts of file metadata and files that were requested, until something that looks more important pushes that data out. It's why you can run:

find /home -type f -name '*.mp3'
find /home -type f -name '*.aac'

and have the second find instance run at ridiculous speed.

Linux only leaves a little bit of memory 'free' to handle spikes in memory usage without too much effort.

Second, you want to find the processes that are eating all your memory; in top use the M command to sort by memory use. Feel free to ignore the VIRT column, that just tells you how much virtual memory has been allocated, not how much memory the process is using. RES reports how much memory is resident, or currently in ram (as opposed to swapped to disk or never actually allocated in the first place, despite being requested).

But, since RES will count e.g. /lib/libc.so.6 memory once for nearly every process, it isn't exactly an awesome measure of how much memory a process is using. The SHR column reports how much memory is shared with other processes, but there is no guarantee that another process is actually sharing -- it could be sharable, just no one else wants to share.

The smem tool is designed to help users better gage just how much memory should really be blamed on each individual process. It does some clever work to figure out what is really unique, what is shared, and proportionally tallies the shared memory to the processes sharing it. smem may help you understand where your memory is going better than top will, but top is an excellent first tool.

ps aux | awk '{print $2, $4, $11}' | sort -k2rn | head -n 10

(Adding -n numeric flag to sort command.)

First you should read an explanation on the output of free. Bottom line: you have at least 10.7 GB of memory readily usable by processes.

Then you should define what "memory usage" is for a process (it's not easy or unambiguous, trust me).

Then we might be able to help more :-)

List and Sort Processes by Memory Usage:

ps -e -orss=,args= | sort -b -k1,1n | pr -TW$COLUMNS

ps aux --sort '%mem'

from procps' ps (default on Ubuntu 12.04) generates output like:

USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
...
tomcat7   3658  0.1  3.3 1782792 124692 ?      Sl   10:12   0:25 /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-oracle/bin/java -Djava.util.logging.config.file=/var/lib/tomcat7/conf/logging.properties -D
root      1284  1.5  3.7 452692 142796 tty7    Ssl+ 10:11   3:19 /usr/bin/X -core :0 -seat seat0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch
ciro      2286  0.3  3.8 1316000 143312 ?      Sl   10:11   0:49 compiz
ciro      5150  0.0  4.4 660620 168488 pts/0   Sl+  11:01   0:08 unicorn_rails worker[1] -p 3000 -E development -c config/unicorn.rb             
ciro      5147  0.0  4.5 660556 170920 pts/0   Sl+  11:01   0:08 unicorn_rails worker[0] -p 3000 -E development -c config/unicorn.rb             
ciro      5142  0.1  6.3 2581944 239408 pts/0  Sl+  11:01   0:17 sidekiq 2.17.8 gitlab [0 of 25 busy]                                                                          
ciro      2386  3.6 16.0 1752740 605372 ?      Sl   10:11   7:38 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox

So here Firefox is the top consumer with 16% of my memory.

You may also be interested in:

ps aux --sort '%cpu'