Are you out of memory, or have plenty to spare?
summary
Linux tools like top/htop, free, slabtop and pmap report different slices of memory so raw VIRT numbers mislead: a process can reserve 1 GiB of virtual address space instantly but RSS stays tiny until pages are touched, and iterating that memory raises RSS to ~1 GiB. 32‑bit processes hit a 4 GiB virtual limit (commonly 3 GiB user + 1 GiB kernel). forked processes share pages via copy‑on‑write, swapping moves cold pages to disk and makes the system painfully slow.
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