Sorting down processes by memory usage
I am able to see the list of all the processes and the memory via
ps aux
and going through the VSZ and RSS
Is there a way to sort down the output of this command by the descending order on RSS value?
A quick and dirty method is to just pipe the output of ps aux to the sort command:
$ ps aux | sort -rn -k 5,6
Example
$ ps aux | sort -rn -k 5,6
...
root 1584 0.0 0.0 22540 1236 ? S 07:04 0:01 hald-addon-storage: polling /dev/sr0 (every 2 sec)
root 1575 0.0 0.0 22536 872 ? S 07:04 0:00 /usr/libexec/hald-addon-generic-backlight
root 1574 0.0 0.0 22536 880 ? S 07:04 0:00 /usr/libexec/hald-addon-leds
root 1565 0.0 0.0 22536 876 ? S 07:04 0:00 /usr/libexec/hald-addon-rfkill-killswitch
saml 2507 0.0 0.0 22232 500 ? S 07:05 0:00 dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session
root 1671 0.0 0.0 22156 936 ? Ss 07:04 0:00 xinetd -stayalive -pidfile /var/run/xinetd.pid
...
This doesn’t handle for the column headers which get mixed in with the output, but it’s easy to remember on the command line, and is an acceptable way to do what you want when manually viewing this type of output.
Example
root 1791 0.0 0.0 4140 536 tty2 Ss+ 07:04 0:00 /sbin/mingetty /dev/tty2
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 996 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 07:04 0:01 [kdmflush]
root 982 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 07:04 0:00 [kvm-irqfd-clean]
More tips
An additional tip would be to pipe the entire output to another command such as less. This allows you to look at the information a page at a time and also use the arrow keys and page up/down keys to scroll back and forth through the output.
$ ps aux | sort -rn -k 5,6 | less
If your output is wrapping a lot you can also utilize the -S switch to less, which will force all the output to stay on a single line instead. You can then use your arrow keys to move left/right/up/down to see all of it.
$ ps aux | sort -rn -k 5,6 | less -S
Sorting within ps
Certain versions of ps provide the ability to use --sort. This switch can then take keys that are either prefixed with a + or a - to denote the sort order…least to greatest or greatest to least.
Examples
vsz,-rss
$ ps aux --sort=vsz,-rss | head -5
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 07:03 0:00 [kthreadd]
root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 07:03 0:00 [ksoftirqd/0]
root 4 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 07:03 0:01 [migration/0]
root 5 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 07:03 0:00 [watchdog/0]
+vsz,+rss
$ ps aux --sort=+vsz,+rss | head -5
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 07:03 0:00 [kthreadd]
root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 07:03 0:00 [ksoftirqd/0]
root 4 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 07:03 0:01 [migration/0]
root 5 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 07:03 0:00 [watchdog/0]
-vsz,-rss
$ ps aux --sort=-vsz,-rss | head -5
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 1832 0.0 0.0 2088924 3312 ? Sl 07:04 0:00 /usr/sbin/console-kit-daemon --no-daemon
saml 3517 0.2 1.2 2073196 100492 ? Sl 07:06 0:34 /home/saml/.dropbox-dist/dropbox
saml 3516 0.0 0.8 2071032 67388 ? Sl 07:06 0:07 /home/saml/.dropbox-dist/dropbox
saml 2657 0.1 0.7 1580936 57788 ? Sl 07:05 0:27 nautilus
As an alternative to the BSD style arguments shown in the other answers, one can use (at least using procps, shipped by Debian and Ubuntu):
ps -eF --sort=-rss
Even if ps do not reflect the actual memory used, this command is pretty helpful.
ps -eo size,pid,user,command --sort -size | awk '{ hr=$1/1024 ; printf("%13.2f Mb ",hr) } { for ( x=4 ; x<=NF ; x++ ) { printf("%s ",$x) } print "" }'
simple way is to install htop
in that you can sort process based on PID,Percentage CPU,MEM
more sophisticated
- Run
topcommand Shift + Fto sort based on field (see the full menu below)- Select
nto sort based on memory usage
n: %MEM = Memory usage (RES)
ps aux –sort -rss is nice:
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
user 5984 0.8 7.4 1632488 296056 ? Sl 06:30 6:18 /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser --type=ren
user 23934 21.7 6.0 1565600 241228 ? Sl 15:45 40:10 /opt/atom/atom --type=renderer --enable-experimental-
user 5533 0.9 5.1 3154096 206376 ? SLl 06:30 6:47 /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser --enable-p
user 17306 1.7 4.9 1360648 196124 ? Sl 18:14 0:36 /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser --type=ren
user 22272 30.1 4.6 1347784 185032 ? Sl 18:43 1:54 /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser --type=ren
user 19318 0.6 3.3 1304324 133452 ? Sl 18:27 0:09 /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser --type=ren
user 22098 1.0 3.3 1298500 133216 ? Sl 18:43 0:04 /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser --type=ren
but if you want to see memory and cpu usages by application (grouped by commands):
python3.6 sum_process_resources.py
==== CPU% ====
0. /opt/atom/atom | 27.8
1. /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser | 11.2
2. python3.6 | 11.0
3. /opt/google/chrome/chrome | 1.6
4. /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg | 1.4
5. /opt/Franz/franz | 0.7
==== MEM% ====
0. /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser | 37.2
1. /opt/google/chrome/chrome | 11.3
2. /opt/Franz/franz | 10.6
3. /opt/atom/atom | 10.1
4. /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg | 2.0
5. com.google.android.gms.persistent | 1.4
==== RSS MB ====
0. /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser | 1475.07 MB
1. /opt/google/chrome/chrome | 461.35 MB
2. /opt/Franz/franz | 429.04 MB
3. /opt/atom/atom | 402.18 MB
4. /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg | 78.53 MB
5. com.google.android.gms.persistent | 58.02 MB
code:
#sum_process_resources.py
from collections import OrderedDict
import subprocess
def run_cmd(cmd_string):
"""Runs commands and saves output to variable"""
cmd_list = cmd_string.split(" ")
popen_obj = subprocess.Popen(cmd_list, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
output = popen_obj.stdout.read()
output = output.decode("utf8")
return output
def sum_process_resources():
"""Sums top X cpu and memory usages grouped by processes"""
ps_memory, ps_cpu, ps_rss = {}, {}, {}
top = 6
output = run_cmd('ps aux').split("n")
for i, line in enumerate(output):
cleaned_list = " ".join(line.split())
line_list = cleaned_list.split(" ")
if i > 0 and len(line_list) > 10:
cpu = float(line_list[2])
memory = float(line_list[3])
rss = float(line_list[5])
command = line_list[10]
ps_cpu[command] = round(ps_cpu.get(command, 0) + cpu, 2)
ps_memory[command] = round(ps_memory.get(command, 0) + memory, 2)
ps_rss[command] = round(ps_rss.get(command, 0) + rss, 2)
sorted_cpu = OrderedDict(sorted(ps_cpu.items(), key=lambda x: x[1], reverse=True))
sorted_memory = OrderedDict(sorted(ps_memory.items(), key=lambda x: x[1], reverse=True))
sorted_rss = OrderedDict(sorted(ps_rss.items(), key=lambda x: x[1], reverse=True))
print("==== CPU% ====")
for i, k in enumerate(sorted_cpu.items()):
if i < top:
print("{}. {} | {}".format(i, k[0], k[1]))
print("==== MEM% ====")
for i, k in enumerate(sorted_memory.items()):
if i < top:
print("{}. {} | {}".format(i, k[0], k[1]))
print("==== RSS MB ====")
for i, k in enumerate(sorted_rss.items()):
if i < top:
print("{}. {} | {} MB".format(i, k[0], round((k[1]/1024), 2)))
if __name__ == '__main__':
sum_process_resources()
How to total up used memory by process name:
Sometimes even looking at the biggest single processes there is still a lot of used memory unaccounted for. To check if there are a lot of the same smaller processes using the memory you can use a command like the following which uses awk to sum up the total memory used by processes of the same name:
ps -e -orss=,args= |awk '{print $1 " " $2 }'| awk '{tot[$2]+=$1;count[$2]++} END {for (i in tot) {print tot[i],i,count[i]}}' | sort -n
e.g. output
9344 docker 1
9948 nginx: 4
22500 /usr/sbin/NetworkManager 1
24704 sleep 69
26436 /usr/sbin/sshd 15
34828 -bash 19
39268 sshd: 10
58384 /bin/su 28
59876 /bin/ksh 29
73408 /usr/bin/python 2
78176 /usr/bin/dockerd 1
134396 /bin/sh 84
5407132 bin/naughty_small_proc 1432
28061916 /usr/local/jdk/bin/java 7
ps aux --sort -%mem
man ps will show you many usages.