[Bubblemon-list] Re: disagreement with top...

[Johan Walles]

Josh Buhl wrote:
> I run the setiathome client in the background as a system user seti, and 
> so my cpu load is always at about 100%, which both top and the standard 
> gnome cpu load monitor report, but bubblemon reports values between 25 
> and 60%.

Bubblemon ignores niced processes (such as most probably setiathome).  The point 
is I'm interested in knowing how much CPU is free for me to use as I like. 
Since niced processes are supposed to yield if I start something else, they 
aren't in the way, and Bubblemon doesn't count them.

> Also, my 768 MB mem are almost aways about 98% full, which both 
> free and the standard gnome monitor reports, whereas bubblemon says 
> something like 251/757MB.

All others are wrong.  This is FAQ #6.  It can be found in 
/usr/local/share/doc/bubblemon (depending on where you installed it), or from 
Savannah's CVS browser:

http://savannah.nongnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/bubblemon/bubblemon/FAQ?rev=1.23&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup

Quoting FAQ #6:

"
6. The amount of memory used reported by the applet is different from
  what [other program] says.  How come?

Free memory measuring on Linux (at least) is somewhat complicated.
What my applet shows is what most people would think of as free
memory.  Therefore, what my applet reports may not correspond to what
other programs say, but the numbers you get from my applet is what you
really want.

A more precise explanation follows.  If it's wrong in some way, or if
you know somewhere else where this is documented in some
comprehensible way, I'd appreciate it if you send a mail to the
mailing list (address@hidden).

Anyway, if we forget about swap for a while, here are the different
kinds of memory, and whether I treat them as "air" or "water":

* Free memory.  Just what you'd expect.  This adds to the "air".
* Used memory.  Just what you'd expect.  This adds to the "water".
* Shared memory.  Memory shared between two or more processes.  This
 adds to the "water".
* Buffers and cache.  Free memory that Linux uses for disk cache.
 When someone allocates more memory, buffers and cache are nuked, so
 this adds to the "air".

If we add swap space into the picture, what I show as the water level
is how much memory is "air" (as defined above) relative to the total
amount of electronic memory.  What I show as color changes is how much
"air" memory above the amount of electronic memory is being used.
Thus, when Linux starts swapping stuff out even though there's
electronic memory left, people watching my meter won't be confused by
this (I know I was before I changed it :-).

If you want to know more than this, have a look at the
get_censored_memory_and_swap() function in bubblemon.c.
"

If you still think bubblemon is wrong, write again!

  Cheers //Johan