Re: memory leak??

From: ray (ray_at_zianet.com)
Date: 12/27/04 

Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 13:21:18 -0700

On Mon, 27 Dec 2004 12:22:45 -0600, Wiseguy wrote:

> ray <ray@zianet.com> wrote in
> news:pan.2004.12.26.16.31.56.501867@zianet.com:
>
>> On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 01:56:40 -0600, Wiseguy wrote:
>>
>>> ray <ray@zianet.com> wrote in
>>> news:pan.2004.12.24.02.14.11.834129@zianet.com:
>>>
>>>> I find that upon boot, and even after a few hours use, that about
>>>> 25% or less of my 512mb memory is used. After leaving it on all
>>>> night, I check the next morning and it is about 50% (numbers
>>>> according to xosview display - this is used memory, not including
>>>> buffers and cache). Can someone give me some guidance as to how I
>>>> might proceed to find the culprit? Been using linux for a few years,
>>>> so I know my way around, but I can't seem to find any good
>>>> documentation about how to find out what's being allocated.
>>>>
>>>> thanks
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> is the memory really used or has it been allocated by the UFS cache?
>>> as time progresses unused memory is allocated by the UFS cache to
>>> optimize directory/file access, but have no fear because the cache is
>>> low priority and the memory is freed if a (real) process needs it.
>>>
>>> To test this out you can do something like
>>>
>>> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null bs=???
>>>
>>> where ??? is total memory minus the size of the OS image minus a few
>>> MB for safety sake
>>>
>>> run the above then kill it and recheck used memory. you should see a
>>> bunch of free memory again.
>>>
>>> don't do this on a production machine with active users though...
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>> Tried that yesterday - if I use a large enough value it gives a memory
>> about memory exhausted - if I use a smaller value, I don't see any
>> change. I'm looking at gnome system monitor now, it would help if I
>> could easily capture the output to a file for later comparison - since
>> I can't figure how to do that, I'll reboot then do a screen capture of
>> system monitor running, and compare against later values - I may be
>> able to find something that way. Last night, I shut down mozilla, and
>> this morning memory useage seems unchanged, although previously, it
>> seems that I've seen it increase overnight when I had mozilla shut
>> down.
>>
>> BTW, I was wondering if anyone is aware of 'memory leak' issues with
>> kernel 2.6.8 - that's what I'm running.
>>
>>
>
> unfortunately in linux the dd command seems to take it's buffer space
> from the large buffer pool and or ufs cache so the size doesn't change
> as I had expected it to in the previous post.
>
> but, what does the (free) command show?
>
> as for 2.6.8 memory leaks: it's not impossible but is doubtful. I have
> noticed memory leaks in the xover feature of xfree that cause mplayer to
> quit working after viewing about 100 video clips without an xserver
> reset.

It's been up and running for five days now, and seems to have stabilized,
although it still seems to be using more memory than I'd expect. Here is
'free' output:

bash-2.05b$ free
             total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 481348 466844 14504 0 26020 108076
-/+ buffers/cache: 332748 148600
Swap: 0 0 0

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