Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754596AbXHZQad (ORCPT ); Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:30:33 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753478AbXHZQaZ (ORCPT ); Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:30:25 -0400 Received: from sovereign.computergmbh.de ([85.214.69.204]:36711 "EHLO sovereign.computergmbh.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751714AbXHZQaZ (ORCPT ); Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:30:25 -0400 Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2007 18:30:24 +0200 (CEST) From: Jan Engelhardt To: Fred Tyler cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Slow, persistent memory leak in 2.6.20 In-Reply-To: <466ad3f90708260916x5d19d0d3hd828e63520960192@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: References: <466ad3f90708260739v645294b9t641cb8258dcc4f4@mail.gmail.com> <466ad3f90708260851u5d8ac58duc4072b71ebf78fc8@mail.gmail.com> <466ad3f90708260916x5d19d0d3hd828e63520960192@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1898 Lines: 56 On Aug 26 2007 12:16, Fred Tyler wrote: >> Please rule out filesystem caches by issuing >> sync; >> echo 3 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches; > >(Sorry if this goes to the list twice... Mailer problems.) alright.. >Ok, I did this on a non-production machine that has only been up for a >few hours, and here's what happened: > >======== Before ========= > >$ free -m > total used free shared buffers cached >Mem: 878 824 54 0 111 422 >-/+ buffers/cache: 290 587 >Swap: 63 0 63 > > >======== After ======== > >root@b0$ free -m > total used free shared buffers cached >Mem: 878 47 830 0 6 4 >-/+ buffers/cache: 36 841 >Swap: 63 0 63 > >====================== > >So, I guess it worked? (I don't know what was supposed to happen, but >memory usage dropped significantly when I did this.) So I guess you are not seeing any memory leak at all, but just the regular caching? >However, I'm not sure this staging machine has been up long enough or >doing enough to exhibit the problem. I can try this on my production >servers (the ones I provided graphs for) late tonight, but how safe is >running this command? Does it permanently disable file caching? Do I >need to reset it afterwards? If I stop all services (databases, drop_cache is a trigger, not a setting. Hence your RAM will be used again after you have used drop_caches. >logging, etc) first, am I protected against data loss? Jan -- - 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/