How to Troubleshoot Memory Issues in Linux

A memory leak occurs when a program allocates memory but fails to release it when it is no longer needed. This runbook helps debug momory issues in linux

Lists the top N processes consuming the most memory.

ps aux --sort=-%mem | head -n <N>

Displays the total amount of free and used memory in the system.

free -h

Searches for 'out of memory' errors in the system log.

grep -i "out of memory" /var/log/syslog