ntpd consuming excessive memory

[bluechalk2]

I'm now running the latest pacman -Syyu update. According to top, ntpd is using 11% of memory on both my Dockstar and Pogo V4. This seems excessive.

I tried using openntpd. It uses much less memory, but does not work: the system date is never updated.

[jbrnd]

I see this too on my Pogoplug V4. ntpd had been running for about a week, but restarting it made no difference for the memory usage - still around 11%.

[Kurlon]

11% of 128MB isn't a lot of memory in 2014.

I just fired up my GoFlex to poke at things. I show ntpd claiming 14.5MB of total virt ram as well. The key to keep an eye on is the RES amount, as thats how much actual physical ram the process is using. NTPD spends most of it's time sleeping, when it IS active it only needs about 2MB resident to do it's quick polling. If you're not actively eating RAM with anything else the kernel will keep most of ntpd's cotents in RAM. Under pressure it'll swap out quickly because it's idle. Net result, if you watch you'll see once settled NTP every hour or so wakes up for a couple seconds, eats under 2MB of RAM to do so, and then goes back to sleep.