How to find user memory usage in linux

How to find user memory usage in linux

Finding out who/what is using the most memory is vital when trying to figure out is causing your system to run out of memory.

There are many ways to figure out what is using the most memory.

1) Find out what is using the most memory

for USER in $(ps haux | awk '{print $1}' | sort -u); do ps haux | awk -v user=$USER '$1 ~ user { sum += $4} END { print user, sum; }' ; done

2) Find out what is using the most memory in percent

TOTAL=$(free | awk '/Mem:/ { print $2 }'); for USER in $(ps haux | awk '{print $1}' | sort -u); do ps hux -U $USER | awk -v user=$USER -v total=$TOTAL '{ sum += $6 } END { printf "%s %.2f\n", user, sum / total * 100; }'; done

3) If your system supports, try to install and use smem:

smem -u

User     Count     Swap      USS      PSS      RSS 
gdm          1        0      308      323      820 
nobody       1        0      912      932     2240 
root        76        0   969016  1010829  1347768 

or

smem -u -t -k

User     Count     Swap      USS      PSS      RSS 
gdm          1        0   308.0K   323.0K   820.0K 
nobody       1        0   892.0K   912.0K     2.2M 
root        76        0   937.6M   978.5M     1.3G 
ameskaas    46        0     1.2G     1.2G     1.5G