On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 10:43:42AM +0100, Hugo Ferreira wrote:
> The output
> shows memory usage below the 100M mark, however the unix command
> "top" shows usage in the order of Gigabytes (at least 4.8). This
> memory consumption grows gradually.

The output of top isn't a reliable way to measure memory usage.

Really you should be looking at /proc/<pid>/maps.  That will show you
if, for example, the heap is becoming fragmented or if there's some
memory leak.  There is a nice utility for examining maps files and
system memory usage, but the name of it escapes me at the moment.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat