Asterisk Memory Instances

I ran the top command however, I am a little puzzled by the 17 instances of Asterisk. Each instance at 12% of memory, totaling 204%. Maybe this field column is not percentage and represents something else?

Not sure why there are so many instances of Asterisk: I would think that one instance would be enough. Is this normal?

root@BRAVO:~# top
top - 16:06:45 up 16 days, 21:10, 0 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Tasks: 61 total, 1 running, 60 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 1.3%us, 0.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 98.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 124628k total, 75600k used, 49028k free, 4168k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 33620k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
11942 root 20 0 1652 648 492 R 2.0 0.5 0:02.62 top
1 root 20 0 2136 372 308 S 0.0 0.3 0:03.67 init
2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.03 events/0
5 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.20 khelper
39 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd/0
3 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.34 ksoftirqd/0
77 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush
78 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 pdflush
79 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kswapd0
80 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/0
610 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:48.74 mtdblockd
643 root 20 0 2708 340 268 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.29 watchdog
660 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd
695 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_0
696 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.27 usb-storage
803 root 20 0 2660 248 176 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.05 resetbutton
920 root 20 0 1532 228 188 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 telnetd
944 root 20 0 1108 216 172 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 p910nd
41 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cqueue/0
998 root 20 0 2244 1364 296 S 0.0 1.1 4:24.54 dnsmasq
1025 root 20 0 2560 484 336 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.36 nas
1376 root 20 0 4276 1056 724 S 0.0 0.8 21:46.97 httpd
1444 root 20 0 3368 732 416 S 0.0 0.6 2:13.16 httpd
1506 root 20 0 1976 328 260 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.04 dropbear
2644 root 20 0 1132 248 184 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 udhcpc
2890 root 20 0 2388 364 300 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.00 process_monitor
2895 root 20 0 2168 368 280 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.14 inadyn
3534 root 20 0 1476 556 440 S 0.0 0.4 0:21.10 xinetd
3596 nobody 20 0 1104 276 224 S 0.0 0.2 0:03.23 pixelserv
3682 1 20 0 1000 252 192 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 portmap
3693 root 20 0 2660 308 236 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.01 wland
3705 www-data 20 0 6156 4536 232 S 0.0 3.6 0:00.09 unfsd
3722 root 20 0 3652 992 560 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 smbd
3730 root 20 0 2324 428 48 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.00 nmbd
3902 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 0:00.66 asterisk
3903 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 0:00.20 asterisk
3904 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 0:00.28 asterisk
3905 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 0:00.00 asterisk
3906 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 0:00.63 asterisk
3907 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 0:00.99 asterisk
3908 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 0:00.33 asterisk
3909 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 0:00.00 asterisk
3910 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 0:00.08 asterisk
3911 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 0:00.00 asterisk
3912 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 0:00.00 asterisk
3913 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 0:02.56 asterisk
3914 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 0:08.13 asterisk
3915 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 0:01.52 asterisk
3916 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 4:51.42 asterisk
3917 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 0:00.58 asterisk
6200 root 20 0 3144 1676 432 S 0.0 1.3 0:06.90 dropbear
6201 root 20 0 2212 1168 932 S 0.0 0.9 0:00.07 bash
6336 root 20 0 2356 736 480 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.40 ssh
7037 root 20 0 23340 14m 4424 S 0.0 12.0 0:00.14 asterisk
10313 root 20 0 5512 4044 432 S 0.0 3.2 0:02.33 dropbear
10315 root 20 0 2212 1184 948 S 0.0 1.0 0:00.04 bash
11855 root 20 0 2032 556 424 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.50 dropbear
11856 root 20 0 2212 1176 940 S 0.0 0.9 0:00.09 bash
975 root 20 0 2392 392 320 S 0.0 0.3 0:03.42 ttraff
25028 root 20 0 1132 304 240 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.95 cron

You are using an old series kernel, or possibly an old version of ps.

These processes are Posix threads and actually share the same memory.

With the version of CentOS normally recommended for Asterisk, ps will only display the head process unless you use a specific option to show you all the processes.

Sensible. 12% of 128MB seem kind of high for this embedded version. I’m wondering if others are seeing similar results.