[Resolved] High memory usage on custom Marvell image

[vinibali]

Hi!
I've been using my Armada 380 powered Zyxel as a NAS with Arch Linux ARM.
Do you know why it uses 160 MBs of memory without any service?
I just powered on an OrangePI (Allwinner CPU) and the idle usage is much lower here.
I thought maybe some part of the memory area is masked, but it's not the case.
Sorry. the outputs are messed up even thou I added the code blocks...
Armada380
########
$ dmesg | grep -i memory
[ 0.000000] Memory policy: Data cache writealloc
[ 0.000000] Early memory node ranges
[ 0.000000] Memory: 427432K/524288K available (15360K kernel code, 1847K rwdata, 6524K rodata, 1024K init, 616K bss, 31320K reserved, 65536K cma-reserved, 0K highmem)
[ 4.018831] Freeing unused kernel image (initmem) memory: 1024K
$ top -b -n1 -o %MEM | head -40
top - 11:57:55 up 35 min, 3 users, load average: 0.12, 0.14, 0.16
Tasks: 92 total, 1 running, 91 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 11.8 us, 17.6 sy, 0.0 ni, 70.6 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
MiB Mem : 482.4 total, 189.1 free, 164.4 used, 128.9 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 241.0 total, 241.0 free, 0.0 used. 305.5 avail Mem

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
250 systemd+ 20 0 19016 11080 9464 S 0.0 2.2 0:00.48 systemd-resolve
1 root 20 0 35880 10360 8480 S 0.0 2.1 0:04.64 systemd
303 balazs 20 0 17656 9252 8068 S 0.0 1.9 0:00.58 systemd
298 root 20 0 14776 9056 7984 S 0.0 1.8 0:00.22 sshd
287 polkitd 20 0 52584 8364 7248 S 0.0 1.7 0:00.10 polkitd
182 root 20 0 29716 7632 6432 S 0.0 1.5 0:00.41 systemd-udevd
153 root 20 0 26888 6736 5940 S 0.0 1.4 0:00.40 systemd-journal
251 systemd+ 20 0 24800 6524 5800 S 0.0 1.3 0:00.27 systemd-timesyn
267 root 20 0 15568 6432 5736 S 0.0 1.3 0:00.19 systemd-logind
314 balazs 20 0 14936 6316 5004 S 0.0 1.3 0:00.87 sshd
197 systemd+ 20 0 16360 6224 5516 S 0.0 1.3 0:00.19 systemd-network
266 root 20 0 9684 6028 5432 S 0.0 1.2 0:00.19 sshd
265 dbus 20 0 12452 5052 4304 S 0.0 1.0 0:00.22 dbus-daemon
1136 balazs 20 0 10116 4860 3372 S 0.0 1.0 0:00.14 bash
316 balazs 20 0 10072 4772 3312 S 0.0 1.0 0:00.11 bash
1032 balazs 20 0 9984 4740 3312 S 0.0 1.0 0:00.11 bash
1029 balazs 20 0 12540 4024 3472 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 tmux: client
307 balazs 20 0 40708 3896 1704 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 (sd-pam)
1031 balazs 20 0 12960 3780 2712 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.32 tmux: server
1278 balazs 20 0 12020 3280 2772 R 6.2 0.7 0:00.02 top
270 root 20 0 4388 800 736 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 agetty
271 root 20 0 2340 796 732 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 agetty
1279 balazs 20 0 7264 788 724 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 head
1134 balazs 20 0 7252 776 712 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 sleep
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_gp
4 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_par_gp
5 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 netns
7 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/0:0H-events_highpri
9 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 mm_percpu_wq
10 root 20 0 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_tasks_kthread
11 root 20 0 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_tasks_trace_kthread
12 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.17 ksoftirqd/0
$ systemctl-cgtop
Control Group Tasks %CPU Memory Input/s Output/s
user.slice 11 5.3 49.2M - -
user.slice/user-1001.slice 11 5.3 49.2M - -
user.slice/user-1001.slice/session-1.scope 9 5.7 47.2M - -
/ 95 3.9 177.0M - -
dev-mqueue.mount - - 4.0K - -
init.scope 1 - 1.6M - -
sys-fs-fuse-connections.mount - - 4.0K - -
sys-kernel-config.mount - - 4.0K - -
sys-kernel-debug.mount - - 4.0K - -
system.slice 14 - 28.6M - -
system.slice/boot.mount - - 12.0K - -
system.slice/dbus.service 1 - 1.6M - -
system.slice/home-balazs-.cache.mount - - 4.0K - -
system.slice/media-ramdisk.mount - - 4.0K - -
system.slice/polkit.service 3 - 4.6M - -
system.slice/srv-nfs-main.mount - - 4.0K - -
system.slice/sshd.service 1 - 4.5M - -
system.slice/system-getty.slice 1 - 272.0K - -make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, '
',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ', '''''''''''system.slice/system-getty.slice/getty@tty1.service', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '') 1 - 268.0K - -
system.slice/system-serial\x2dgetty.slice 1 - 188.0K - -
system.slice/system-serial\x2dgetty.slice/serial-getty@ttyS0.service 1 - 184.0K - -
system.slice/systemd-journald.service 1 - 3.1M - -
system.slice/systemd-logind.service 1 - 1.1M - -
system.slice/systemd-networkd.service 1 - 2.2M - -
system.slice/systemd-resolved.service 1 - 5.1M - -
system.slice/systemd-timesyncd.service 2 - 1.4M - -
system.slice/systemd-udevd.service 1 - 2.3M - -
system.slice/tmp.mount - - 4.0K - -
system.slice/var-cache-pacman-pkg.mount - - 4.0K - -
system.slice/var-log.mount - - 4.0K - -
system.slice/var-spool.mount - - 4.0K - -make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, '
',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ', '''''''''''user.slice/user-1001.slice/user@1001.service', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '') 2 - 2.0M - -
########

Allwinner H2+
########
$ dmesg | grep -i memory
[ 0.000000] Memory policy: Data cache writealloc
[ 0.000000] Early memory node ranges
[ 0.000000] Memory: 417740K/524288K available (15360K kernel code, 1847K rwdata, 6524K rodata, 1024K init, 616K bss, 41012K reserved, 65536K cma-reserved, 0K highmem)
[ 0.940147] Freeing initrd memory: 9496K
[ 2.828560] Freeing unused kernel image (initmem) memory: 1024K
$ top -b -n1 -o %MEM | head -40
top - 09:58:18 up 18 min, 1 user, load average: 0.01, 0.03, 0.03
Tasks: 110 total, 1 running, 109 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 0.0 us, 5.2 sy, 0.0 ni, 94.8 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
MiB Mem : 482.2 total, 329.2 free, 45.2 used, 107.9 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 0.0 total, 0.0 free, 0.0 used. 421.8 avail Mem

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
261 systemd+ 20 0 18152 10816 9284 S 0.0 2.2 0:01.03 systemd-resolve
1 root 20 0 35692 10096 8340 S 0.0 2.0 0:04.53 systemd
308 balazs 20 0 16552 9060 8048 S 0.0 1.8 0:00.66 systemd
303 root 20 0 13608 8764 7752 S 0.0 1.8 0:00.16 sshd
242 systemd+ 20 0 15384 7512 6772 S 0.0 1.5 0:00.42 systemd-network
233 root 20 0 28900 7272 6188 S 0.0 1.5 0:00.96 systemd-udevd
214 root 20 0 29652 6528 5816 S 0.0 1.3 0:00.84 systemd-journal
262 systemd+ 20 0 23840 6324 5656 S 0.0 1.3 0:00.51 systemd-timesyn
319 balazs 20 0 13768 6204 4952 S 0.0 1.3 0:00.08 sshd
296 root 20 0 14600 6128 5492 S 0.0 1.2 0:00.37 systemd-logind
295 root 20 0 9688 5968 5372 S 0.0 1.2 0:00.11 sshd
294 dbus 20 0 11364 4876 4192 S 0.0 1.0 0:00.41 dbus-daemon
321 balazs 20 0 9936 4684 3308 S 0.0 0.9 0:00.32 bash
312 balazs 20 0 22220 3464 1448 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.00 (sd-pam)
756 balazs 20 0 12200 3332 2824 R 11.8 0.7 0:00.05 top
757 balazs 20 0 7272 796 724 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 head
299 root 20 0 2340 720 656 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.01 agetty
298 root 20 0 4388 712 648 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.01 agetty
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 kthreadd
3 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_gp
4 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_par_gp
5 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 netns
9 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 mm_percpu_wq
10 root 20 0 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_tasks_kthread
11 root 20 0 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_tasks_trace_kthread
12 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 ksoftirqd/0
13 root 20 0 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.14 rcu_preempt
14 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.03 migration/0
16 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuhp/0
17 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuhp/1
18 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1
19 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 ksoftirqd/1
22 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuhp/2
$ systemctl-cgtop
Control Group Tasks %CPU Memory Input/s Output/s
user.slice 6 5.0 32.5M - -
user.slice/user-1000.slice 6 5.0 32.5M - -
user.slice/user-1000.slice/session-1.scope 4 5.0 29.8M - -
/ 110 1.0 61.0M - -
dev-mqueue.mount - - 76.0K - -
init.scope 1 - 2.3M - -
sys-fs-fuse-connections.mount - - 12.0K - -
sys-kernel-config.mount - - 4.0K - -
sys-kernel-debug.mount - - 4.0K - -
system.slice 11 - 35.3M - -
system.slice/boot.mount - - 48.0K - -
system.slice/dbus.service 1 - 2.5M - -
system.slice/home-balazs-.cache.mount - - 4.0K - -
system.slice/media-ramdisk.mount - - 4.0K - -
system.slice/sshd.service 1 - 6.0M - -
system.slice/system-getty.slice 1 - 376.0K - -make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, '
',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ', '''''''''''system.slice/system-getty.slice/getty@tty1.service', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '') 1 - 368.0K - -
system.slice/system-modprobe.slice - - 280.0K - -
system.slice/system-serial\x2dgetty.slice 1 - 140.0K - -
system.slice/system-serial\x2dgetty.slice/serial-getty@ttyS0.service 1 - 132.0K - -
system.slice/systemd-journald.service 1 - 4.9M - -
system.slice/systemd-logind.service 1 - 1.1M - -
system.slice/systemd-networkd.service 1 - 2.4M - -
system.slice/systemd-resolved.service 1 - 5.9M - -
system.slice/systemd-timesyncd.service 2 - 1.4M - -
system.slice/systemd-udevd.service 1 - 7.7M - -
system.slice/tmp.mount - - 4.0K - -
system.slice/var-cache-pacman-pkg.mount - - 4.0K - -
system.slice/var-log.mount - - 4.0K - -
system.slice/var-spool.mount - - 4.0K - -make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, '
',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ',make_clickable_callback(MAGIC_URL_EMAIL, ' ', '''''''''''user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '')', '', '') 2 - 2.6M - -
########
[url]https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/156g9x9/arm_high_memory_usage_on_custom_marvell_image[/url]
[url]https://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=16534[/url]

[vinibali]

Oh boy, that was f2fs's memory caching...
$ sudo tail -4 /sys/kernel/debug/f2fs/status
Memory: 99637 KB
- static: 98421 KB
- cached: 79 KB
- paged : 1136 KB