Did you actually restart the PostgreSQL service after making changes to the configuration file?:

sudo service postgresql restart

Unless you restart the PostgreSQL service, the changes in “postgresql.conf” will not be applied. That would definitely explain no changes seen.

The fact that you initially only saw some 4 GB RAM usage, was at least an indication you likely hadn’t yet made any changes to the “postgresql.conf”, as the default configuration for RAM usage upon installation of PostgreSQL are really low, and based on multiple websites I read woefully inadequate for running a spatial database.

Anyway, if none of this indicates a problem, then do leave it running a bit longer. The loading of ways definitely speeds up considerably during the way processing.