On 21 Jul 2002 16:00:09 +0200
mru@users.sourceforge.net (M) wrote:
>
> I noticed that doing lots or file accesses causes the used memory to
> increase, *after* subtracting buffers/cache. Here is an example:
>
> $ free
> total used free shared buffers
> cached
> Mem: 773776 30024 743752 0 1992
> 10424-/+ buffers/cache: 17608 756168
> Swap: 81904 0 81904
> $ du > /dev/null
> $ free
> total used free shared buffers
> cached
> Mem: 773776 78008 695768 0 26328
> 10472-/+ buffers/cache: 41208 732568
> Swap: 81904 0 81904
>
> Here 24 MB of memory have been used up. Repeating the du seems to have
> little effect. This directory has ~3200 subdirs and 13400 files.
>
> After a few hours use about 200 MB are used, apperently for
> nothing. Killing all processed and unmounting file systems doesn't
> help.
>
> Is this a memory leak? I get the same results with ext2, ext3,
> reiserfs and nfs.
wow!
I've been seeing this, too, but I thought I was just reading something
wrong. Especially after my nightly cron jobs (which involve a 'find
/') run, I'll often find myself with 80% of physical RAM used, and
nobody (as far as 'top' can see) using it. You didn't specify which
kernel you're using, but I'm running 2.4.19-rc1-ac1 plus some patches,
and I've seen it since at least about pre9-ac*. I might try to narrow it
down more if it could be useful.
--hobbs
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jul 23 2002 - 22:00:35 EST