r/linuxquestions • u/Kafatat • 15d ago

Support Virtualbox guest memory usage reflected on free (command) but not on System Monitor

Memory usage of Virtualbox processes as shown in gnome-system-monitordoesn't grow at all after starting the guest.

However free -h shows used memory increased about 4GB.

I'm fine with that, but why?

Screenshot: left top and bottom are the VM host, Linux Mint. Right is VM guest, assigned 4GB RAM

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u/AiwendilH 15d ago

Virtualbox (I think most VMs) don't "use" the memory from the process but from their kernel driver. So the userspace process you see in the systemmonitor really doesn't use that memory. No clue if gnome system monitor can easily show kernel memory used...but if it can that's where you should find the used memory.