Re: 2.6.24-rc7: memory leak?

From: CaT
Date: Thu Jan 17 2008 - 06:43:18 EST


On Thu, Jan 17, 2008 at 12:22:03PM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-01-17 at 17:34 +1100, CaT wrote:
> > cache). During the rsync the memory used grew to just shy of 1.6gig and
> > now, about 2 hours after the rsync has well and truly finished, the used
> > memory is at 1.23gig. This is what free reports:
> >
> > total used free shared buffers cached
> > Mem: 2058128 1994468 63660 0 688604 11432
> > -/+ buffers/cache: 1294432 763696
> > Swap: 1048568 0 1048568
>
> How much memory does:
>
> echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
>
> gain you?

56M used now. Should all this cache usage not be counted towards the
'Cached' entry in meminfo rather then getting counted as part of used
ram. I assume that this would not cause an oom situation and would be
freed up if all that memory really did need to be used.

> > ext3_inode_cache 1235577 1240565 768 5 1 : tunables 54 27 8 : slabdata 248113 248113 0
> > dentry 703661 749797 200 19 1 : tunables 120 60 8 : slabdata 39463 39463 0
> > buffer_head 174535 209087 104 37 1 : tunables 120 60 8 : slabdata 5651 5651 0
>
> would get freed by doing that.

They were indeed.

> this one:
>
> > size-64 537590 850249 64 59 1 : tunables 120 60 8 : slabdata 14411 14411 0
>
> I'm unsure about, if that one sticks around that'd be something to worry
> about. See if you can monitor this value and try to determine:

This went away also.

> - if it ever drops
> - what makes it grow (fastest)
>
> I guess we could stick some instrumentation in there to track that
> bucket.

Might help prevent upraised eyebrows or worse. :)

--
"To the extent that we overreact, we proffer the terrorists the
greatest tribute."
- High Court Judge Michael Kirby
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