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Linux Distro with low ram usage ?
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Linux Distro with low ram usage ?

After a lot of thinking I finally got my vps from @backupsy today & chose CentOS .
Now this is the first time I have gotten a vps with ram as low as 512 MB but I was surprised to see the system using around 250 MB right after installation. I haven't installed anything myself yet. The remaining ram will hardly fulfill my needs. So, can you please

1) tell me if this much ram consumption is normal for centos ?

2) Any Linux Distro that take up very little ram ? Whenever I have installed linux variants, the ram is usually no more than 50 MB at startup.

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Comments

  • thats not normal I think.

    Debian 6 minimal 32 bit: 4MB ram :D

    Thanked by 2tux c0y
  • Paste free -m

  • @trexos said:
    thats not normal I think.

    Debian 6 minimal 32 bit: 4MB ram :D

    4mb :S :| I don't have the right words to express my shock :s :) & I always wondered how people managed to live with a 32mb vps :)

    offtopic: I think inception is a great host too kudos to @AnthonySmith for doing such a fine job

  • Just have to cut down on the many programs you don't need running. Some existing scripts already do this.

  • RadiRadi Host Rep, Veteran

    @raza19 Deban should use littler RAM. Or go with Turnkey Linux.

  • trexostrexos Member
    edited August 2013

    @raza19

    It's so awesome to have a clean image with only 4MB ram. So you can add everything that you need :)

  • RadiRadi Host Rep, Veteran

    @trexos Which provider has such template?

  • LowEndSpirit (@Anthony) and BandWagonHost

  • My CentOS with Backupsy is only eating about 225MB, with cPanel DNS-Only installed.

  • Use Minstall, it will help strip down the OS. I've been using it extensively recently.

  • It's easy to add the Debian 6 32bit minimal template to the SolusVM or another panel.

    Just download it here http://download.openvz.org/template/precreated/contrib/debian-6.0-i386-minimal.tar.gz

    By using this template, the ram usage usually just 3mb or 9mb

  • @raza19 Fresh install CentOS should be use less than 100MB RAM. My CentOS box using 50-60MB RAM even after installing nginx, php-fpm and mariadb.

  • Debian 7 x32 running at 12MB with 2 active SSH connections.

  • bdtechbdtech Member
    edited August 2013

    Is debian 7 32bit minimal not out yet? Waiting for ramnode!

  • some providers have debian 7 eating 4mb

  • @ErawanArifNugroho said:
    It's easy to add the Debian 6 32bit minimal template to the SolusVM or another panel.

    Just download it here http://download.openvz.org/template/precreated/contrib/debian-6.0-i386-minimal.tar.gz

    By using this template, the ram usage usually just 3mb or 9mb

    Had that one right from the start.

  • Quite lot of provider already have deb7 minimal template.

    Though i'm staying with deb6 for some reason.

    I can have 2mb ram usage after i clean up everything.

    image

  • @johnlth93 said:
    Quite lot of provider already have deb7 minimal template.

    Though i'm staying with deb6 for some reason.

    I can have 2mb ram usage after i clean up everything.

    image

    Try using dropbear as the SSH server, that will help minimize the ram usage a bit more.

  • Looks like you got the ram usage from "top" command.
    Whats the output of "free -m" ?

  • danodano Member

    4mb is impressive.

    Seems like a straight Debian install will get you a minimal mem usage, as it comes with almost nothing running. Otherwise, it will still have some items that can be tweaked and services that can run lighter.

  • free -m && ps auxwwf && cat /etc/issue.net
                 total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
    Mem:            64         13         50          0          0          9
    -/+ buffers/cache:          3         60
    Swap:           32          3         28
    USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
    root         1  0.0  0.8   2148   564 ?        Ss   Aug01   0:11 init [2]
    root         2  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S    Aug01   0:00 [kthreadd/1116]
    root         3  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S    Aug01   0:00  \_ [khelper/1116]
    root      1539  0.0  1.0  10024   680 ?        Ss   Aug01   0:00 /usr/sbin/saslauthd -a pam -c -m /var/run/saslauthd -n 2
    root      1543  0.0  0.6  10024   448 ?        S    Aug01   0:00  \_ /usr/sbin/saslauthd -a pam -c -m /var/run/saslauthd -n 2
    root      1664  0.0  1.6   9920  1096 ?        Ss   Aug01   0:39 sendmail: MTA: accepting connections
    root      1733  0.0  0.7   3704   524 ?        Ss   Aug01   0:01 /usr/sbin/cron
    root      1794  0.0  0.8   2460   568 ?        Ss   Aug01   0:00 /usr/sbin/xinetd -pidfile /var/run/xinetd.pid -stayalive -inetd_compat -inetd_ipv6
    root      2567  0.0  3.3   5472  2228 ?        Ss   Aug01   0:23 /usr/sbin/openvpn --writepid /var/run/openvpn.server.pid --daemon ovpn-server --cd /etc/openvpn --config /etc/openvpn/server.conf
    root      3092  0.0  1.1   6336   768 ?        Ss   Aug01   0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd
    root     21328  0.0  2.1   9656  1384 ?        Ss   Aug09   0:00  \_ sshd: root@pts/0
    root     21330  0.0  1.9   4628  1280 pts/0    Ss   Aug09   0:00      \_ -bash
    root     30542  0.0  1.6   4208  1064 pts/0    R+   00:26   0:00          \_ ps auxwwf
    Debian GNU/Linux 7
    
  • MelitaMelita Member, Host Rep
    edited August 2013

    OP mentioned that it's Backupsy, which is using KVM virtualization.

    Isn't it fundamentally different with OpenVZ? My minimal OpenVZ CentOS 6 template also only consumes around 5 MB of RAM. But each KVM guest also has its own kernel memory space, which will boosts up its RAM usage considerably (not to mention QEMU process memory overhead on host node). I think we should not compare the RAM usage with OpenVZ at all.

  • Backupsy, Debian 7 32bit, default installation with latest updates: 26MB used memory

    Another KVM VPS, same distro with latest updates: 14MB used memory

  • netomxnetomx Moderator, Veteran

    @Pertti reboot once and check again

  • @netomx oh well, rebooted and new values are: backupsy 15MB and another 11MB. :)

  • netomxnetomx Moderator, Veteran

    Excellent, good numbers on KVM

  • sleddogsleddog Member
    edited August 2013

    OpenVz and KVM manage and display memory differently. Cross-comparisons are really a waste of time.

    Any distro, if pared down to minimal running processes, will use approximately the same amount of minimal memory -- CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu are all alike.

    On Linux, the memory usage you see with 'free' may not equate with the sum of the processes you see with 'top' or 'ps' for many reasons. Linux caches varies thing to memory (like inode access) that may in fact inflate your 'used' memory (not your cached memory!). And OpenVz and KVM behave differently in this regard.

    If you want to run in minimal memory, pare down your daemons to nothing but ssh (or smaller still, dropbear). Reboot to clear all cached data and go from there.

  • @raza19 Are you sure you're not looking at the values including disk cache?

    I was confused too until I read : Linux Ate My Ram!

  • smansman Member
    edited August 2013

    I don't know why people seem to think memory usage depends on the Linux distribution. They all use the same kernel and almost all the same packages. It's just a matter of figuring out what to remove and how to configure things.

    Some may use less memory out of the box but again, that comes down to default packages and configurations.

    Also, keep in mind that if you are using OpenVZ you are going to be using less memory because your VPS is not running a kernel.

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