Aptitude vs apt-get memory usage on Debian
Sat, 19 Dec 2009 22:59:38 +0000
If you are administering small-memory VPS servers it's very easy to exceed all available memory. Typical memory hogs (apache mpm-prefork, rsyslogd) could be easily replaced by alternatives. It's not very easy to do with packaging system (you have to be up to date with security updates).
I compared memory usage of two APT interfaces: apt-get and (new, now prefferred) aptitude. Here are the results (top output when command shows list of packages to install):
# apt-get install munin ---------------------------- PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 28800 root 20 0 15940 13m 10m T 0 10.3 0:00.44 apt-get
# aptitude install munin ---------------------------- PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 28822 root 20 0 40936 33m 12m T 0 26.3 0:00.92 aptitude
As you can see aptitude uses almost 3x more memory than apt-get (VSZ and RSZ). If you are low on memory on low-end box it's noteworthly saving.
Note: tests were done on 32-bit OpenVZ-based VPS.
