RAM usage seems to be way off for processes about dietpi-dashboard

[MichaIng]

My two cents:

• The virtual memory is indeed no practical indicator for actual memory consumption of processes. Depending on the process, e.g. when heavily threaded like a webserver or database which can but not does currently handle a lot of concurrent connections, the virtual memory may be magnitudes of orders higher than what the process actually takes. It is more like an upper bounding of what it may use. And it includes shared memory, like loaded shared libraries which are in fact used by multiple different processes concurrently. In case of multiple websever of PHP handler child processes, e.g. the virtual memory of each child process includes the shared features, like PHP OPcache, which is indeed shared across all PHP handler child processes and often makes the major parts of the whole PHP process memory consumption (virtual and physical).
• The resident memory consumption is much closer to what a single process really currently uses in memory. Adding up all resident memory values of the whole process list does not 100% precisely but close enough tell you how much memory is used and how much memory is hence available, before the OOM killer kicks in. Doing so with the virtual memory gives you quickly values much (sometimes magnitudes of orders) higher than the actual total system memory, and hence does not help at all to evaluate whether you need to tweak your services or upgrade your RAM modules (on non-SBCs 😉) or not. And that practical aspect, to know from the memory consumption whether action is advised or not, is what IMHO is most important when showing these stats at all.

[ravenclaw900]

Hi,
The dashboard uses the virtual memory of a process, which is, according to the docs of the system information library that I use, "the total amount of memory used by the process". htop by default uses resident set size, which is, also according to the docs, "the amount of non-swapped physical memory used by the process". If, in htop, you enable the M_VIRT column under Setup, you should get the same value as the dashboard.

[igorkulman]

Would it be possible maybe to add a switch to toggle between those 2 values?

[ravenclaw900]

Alright, that makes sense, and it will match up completely with htop now. I'll switch it over to the resident memory.

[ravenclaw900]

Done with 9d96c90.

[igorkulman]

Thanks