title: Ruby process memory structure
body: <p>I'm trying to figure out an issue with memory usage in a ruby process. I tried to take a heap dump of the ruby process using the ObjectSpace module to understand what's happening. What's puzzling is that, the "top" command in linux reports that the process uses 17.8 GB of virtual memory and 15GB of resident memory. But, the size of the heap dumps are only around 2.7-2.9 GB. </p>
  
  <p>Based on the Ruby documentation, Objectspace.dump_all method dumps the contents of the ruby heap as JSON.</p>
  
  <p>I'm not able to understand what is hogging the rest of the memory. It would be helpful, if someone could help me to understand what's happening.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you.</p>