Re: Gigantic memory leak in linux-2.6.[789]!

[Chris Friesen]

Kristian Sørensen wrote:

> Anyway - How does this work in practice? Does the file system 
> implementation use a wrapper for kfree or?

When an app faults in new memory and there is no unused memory, the system will 
page out apps and/or filesystem data from the page cache so the memory can be 
given to the app requesting it.

> Is there any way to force instant free of kernel memory - when freed?

It's not free, it's in use by the page cache.  This is a performance feature--we 
try and keep around as much stuff as possible that might be needed by running apps.

> Else it is quite hard testing for possible memory leaks in our Umbrella 
> kernel module ... :-/

Such is life.  As a crude workaround, on a swapless system you can start one or 
two memory hogs and they will force the system to free up as much memory as 
possible.

Chris
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