tail -f жрёт память, что делать?

# ls -l /var/log/mylog
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1803578604 May 19 10:42 /var/log/mylog

# wc -l /var/log/mylog
15505789 /var/log/mylog

# ls -l access.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8750983335 May 19 11:00 access.log

# wc -l access.log
55938503 access.log

# tail -f access.log

# ps aux | grep tail
root      4361  0.0  0.0  58976   544 pts/0    S    11:04   0:00 tail -f access.log

544KБ памяти

Природа tail такова, что при он не может занимать память.

Осталось выяснить что у тебя за версия tail и заодно какая ОС.

# cat /etc/centos-release
CentOS release 6.6 (Final)

# tail --version
tail (GNU coreutils) 8.4
Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Paul Rubin, David MacKenzie, Ian Lance Taylor,
and Jim Meyering.

# cat /etc/redhat-release 
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.6 (Santiago)

# tail --version
tail (GNU coreutils) 8.4

root     25402  0.0  0.0   4104   560 pts/0    S    12:04   0:00 tail -f /var/log/cdr

root     25403  0.0  0.3   5368  3320 pts/0    S    12:04   0:00 /usr/bin/ruby /usr/local/bin/cdr.rb

....

root     24934 11.5  2.3  50196 24608 ?        Sl   11:49   2:59 /usr/sbin/asterisk -f -vvvg -c

tail -f

less +F