Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756755Ab3CDJwZ (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Mar 2013 04:52:25 -0500 Received: from mail-wi0-f193.google.com ([209.85.212.193]:45849 "EHLO mail-wi0-f193.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755776Ab3CDJwY (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Mar 2013 04:52:24 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2013 17:52:22 +0800 Message-ID: Subject: Inactive memory keep growing and how to release it? From: Lenky Gao To: Greg KH , "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , "devel@linuxdriverproject.org" , "olaf@aepfle.de" , "apw@canonical.com" , "andi@firstfloor.org" , "akpm@linux-foundation.org" , "linux-mm@kvack.org" Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1279 Lines: 61 Hi, When i just run a test on Centos 6.2 as follows: #!/bin/bash while true do file="/tmp/filetest" echo $file dd if=/dev/zero of=${file} bs=512 count=204800 &> /dev/null sleep 5 done the inactive memory keep growing: #cat /proc/meminfo | grep Inactive\(fi Inactive(file): 420144 kB ... #cat /proc/meminfo | grep Inactive\(fi Inactive(file): 911912 kB ... #cat /proc/meminfo | grep Inactive\(fi Inactive(file): 1547484 kB ... and i cannot reclaim it: # cat /proc/meminfo | grep Inactive\(fi Inactive(file): 1557684 kB # echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches # cat /proc/meminfo | grep Inactive\(fi Inactive(file): 1520832 kB I have tested on other version kernel, such as 2.6.30 and .6.11, the problom also exists. When in the final situation, i cannot kmalloc a larger contiguous memory, especially in interrupt context. Can you give some tips to avoid this? PS: # uname -a Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Dec 6 19:48:22 GMT 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux -- Regards, Lenky -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/