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Message-ID: <466ad3f90708260958ha149c40ncf5a8287c8a25307@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:58:54 -0400
From: "Fred Tyler" <fredty8@gmail.com>
To: "Jan Engelhardt" <jengelh@computergmbh.de>
Subject: Re: Slow, persistent memory leak in 2.6.20
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
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On 8/26/07, Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@computergmbh.de> wrote:
>
> On Aug 26 2007 12:16, Fred Tyler wrote:
> >> Please rule out filesystem caches by issuing
> >>         sync;
> >>         echo 3 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches;
> >
> >
> >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?

Also, how can you explain the differences between the graphs of
long-term memory usage? This first graph is from a server running
2.6.16 that never has memory problems:

    http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff117/fredty8/memory-a4.png

And here's a graph of a server running 2.6.12 that has to be rebooted
every month or two because it runs out of memory:

    http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff117/fredty8/memory-a2.png

Now, admittedly, the 2.6.20 server has not been running long enough to
know whether or not it's going to start starving applications of
memory, but the graph here looks a whole lot more like 2.6.12 than
2.6.16, wouldn't you agree:

    http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff117/fredty8/memory-b1.png


Those 2.6.12 servers caused me a ton of stress because I let the
problem go too long before I did anything. In the event that 2.6.20 is
doing the same thing, I'm trying to fix it before things get out of
control.
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