[plug] Possible problem with memory leaks
Bret Busby
bret at busby.net
Tue Feb 22 09:46:38 WST 2005
On Mon, 21 Feb 2005, Brad Campbell wrote:
>
> Bret Busby wrote:
>>
>> Output of free:
>>
>> total used free shared buffers cached
>> Mem: 762936 575960 186976 0 59240 323376
>> -/+ buffers/cache: 193344 569592
>> Swap: 1052216 0 1052216
>>
>
> So you are actually using about 193M out of 768. Sounds pretty reasonable to
> me.
> You have 323M Cached and 59M Buffers. If the system really needs the memory
> it will dump cache. You have 186M completely free. No problem.
>
> Here are a couple of outputs from my machines for comparison. You can see my
> laptop has 20M free, but 570M cached. If it needs the memory back it will
> just reclaim it by dumping cache.
>
> bklaptop:~>free -m
> total used free shared buffers cached
> Mem: 1009 988 20 0 51 570
> -/+ buffers/cache: 366 642
> Swap: 980 477 502
>
> brad at tv:~$ free -m
> total used free shared buffers cached
> Mem: 1515 1480 35 0 0 1104
> -/+ buffers/cache: 375 1140
> Swap: 0 0 0
>
> brad at srv:~$ free -m
> total used free shared buffers cached
> Mem: 1518 1405 112 0 61 995
> -/+ buffers/cache: 348 1169
> Swap: 964 26 938
>
> Here are the major memory consumers on bklaptop as reported by top sorted by
> memory.
>
> 1513 brad 19 0 181m 130m 24m S 2.0 13.0 16:29.33 thunderbird-bin
> 1515 brad 8 0 181m 130m 24m S 0.0 13.0 0:00.03 thunderbird-bin
> 1516 brad 9 0 181m 130m 24m S 0.0 13.0 0:00.99 thunderbird-bin
> 1518 brad 9 0 181m 130m 24m S 0.0 13.0 0:02.35 thunderbird-bin
> 2566 brad 10 0 90552 81m 16m S 0.3 8.1 14:33.48 firefox-bin
> 2568 brad 8 0 90552 81m 16m S 0.0 8.1 0:00.00 firefox-bin
> 2569 brad 9 0 90552 81m 16m S 0.0 8.1 0:04.46 firefox-bin
> 2571 brad 9 0 90552 81m 16m S 0.0 8.1 0:06.05 firefox-bin
> 3280 brad 8 0 90552 81m 16m S 0.0 8.1 0:00.00 firefox-bin
> 7807 brad 8 0 42128 41m 964 S 0.0 4.1 0:09.14 bk
> 5157 brad 8 0 42116 41m 964 S 0.0 4.1 0:12.77 bk
> 1480 root 9 -10 69540 30m 9636 S 0.7 3.0 29:58.28 XFree86
> 3995 brad 9 0 20016 19m 19m S 0.0 1.9 1:37.89 dosexec
> 3997 brad 9 0 20428 12m 11m S 0.0 1.2 0:09.72 xcrt
> 3796 brad 9 0 11632 11m 11m S 0.0 1.1 0:06.89 dosexec
> 7674 brad 9 0 11304 11m 3440 S 0.0 1.1 0:04.48 wish
>
> Your system looks fine.
> HTH.
> Brad
> --
>
After that, I kept going, and tried to use up the available RAM. With 19
Mozilla browser windows open, with an average of about 7-8 tabs in each
window, open, I got up to about 80% memory usage. I then quit Mozilla,
and that changed the memory being used (as opposed to being cached),
from about 500MB, to about 200MB, with an increase in the cached memory,
of about 300MB.
I then cleared the cache, and changed the Cache setting, in Mozilla,
from 50MB to 5MB, as I figured that the amount of the cache, as set,
would apply to each browser window, and so that I would not get
anywhere as much memory caching.
I then again quit Mozilla, and restarted it, but the memory usage was
unchanged.
This morning, with three Mozilla browser windows open, with a total of
28 tabs open, one Konqueror window with 6 tabs open, and three xterm
sessions, two with just command prompts (one in an ssh session) and one
with PINE running, I have 100% memory usage, with 37% in cache.
Outputs follow.
free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 745 721 23 0 100 284
-/+ buffers/cache: 336 408
Swap: 1027 2 1024
top
[H[2J[?7l[mtop - 08:58:26 up 22:57, 4 users, load average: 0.00, 0.11, 0.18[m[39;49m[K
Tasks:[m[39;49m[1m 111 [m[39;49mtotal,[m[39;49m[1m 1 [m[39;49mrunning,[m[39;49m[1m 110 [m[39;49msleeping,[m[39;49m[1m 0 [m[39;49mstopped,[m[39;49m[1m 0 [m[39;49mzombie[m[39;49m[K
Cpu(s):[m[39;49m[1m 20.1% [m[39;49muser,[m[39;49m[1m 2.8% [m[39;49msystem,[m[39;49m[1m 2.3% [m[39;49mnice,[m[39;49m[1m 74.9% [m[39;49midle[m[39;49m[K
Mem: [m[39;49m[1m 762936k [m[39;49mtotal,[m[39;49m[1m 739388k [m[39;49mused,[m[39;49m[1m 23548k [m[39;49mfree,[m[39;49m[1m 103460k [m[39;49mbuffers[m[39;49m[K
Swap:[m[39;49m[1m 1052216k [m[39;49mtotal,[m[39;49m[1m 2872k [m[39;49mused,[m[39;49m[1m 1049344k [m[39;49mfree,[m[39;49m[1m 290892k [m[39;49mcached[m[39;49m[K
[6;1H
[7m PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND [m[39;49m[K
[m[1m 5410 bret 16 0 988 988 756 R 9.6 0.1 0:00.13 top [m[39;49m[K
[m 1 root 8 0 508 508 456 S 0.0 0.1 0:05.05 init [m[39;49m[K
[m 2 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.74 keventd [m[39;49m[K
[m 3 root 19 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.83 ksoftirqd_CPU0 [m[39;49m[K
[m 4 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.79 kswapd [m[39;49m[K
[m 5 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 bdflush [m[39;49m[K
[m 6 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:19.23 kupdated [m[39;49m[K
[m 7 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 i2oevtd [m[39;49m[K
[m 8 root 11 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 6:10.14 kjournald [m[39;49m[K
[m 108 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd [m[39;49m[K
[m 112 root 8 0 308 304 264 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 udevd [m[39;49m[K
[m 207 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 2:36.95 kjournald [m[39;49m[K
[m 209 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 kjournald [m[39;49m[K
[m 210 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:14.32 kjournald [m[39;49m[K
[m 211 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.11 kjournald [m[39;49m[K
[m 212 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.08 kjournald [m[39;49m[K
[m 729 daemon 9 0 444 444 376 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 portmap [m[39;49m[K
[m 805 root 9 0 804 804 700 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.72 syslogd [m[39;49m[K
[m 808 root 9 0 1272 1272 448 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.39 klogd [m[39;49m[K
[m 824 root 9 0 3032 3032 1488 S 0.0 0.4 0:34.69 cupsd [m[39;49m[K
[m 842 messageb 9 0 992 992 872 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.07 dbus-daemon-1 [m[39;49m[K
[m 972 root 9 0 728 728 656 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 inetd [m[39;49m[K
[m 981 root 9 0 968 968 856 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.94 atalkd [m[39;49m[K
[m 985 root 9 0 692 692 596 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 papd [m[39;49m[K
[m 987 root 9 0 1260 1260 1056 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.03 afpd [m[39;49m[K
[m 1063 postgres 9 0 2196 2196 2112 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.11 postmaster [m[39;49m[K
[m 1068 postgres 9 0 2976 2976 1936 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.04 postmaster [m[39;49m[K
[m 1069 postgres 9 0 2044 2044 1936 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.04 postmaster [m[39;49m[K
[m 1076 postgres 9 0 1700 1700 1372 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.45 pg_autovacuum [m[39;49m[K
[m 1080 root 9 0 1864 1864 1404 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.39 nmbd [m[39;49m[K
[m 1086 root 9 0 1536 1532 1304 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 sshd [m[39;49m[K[6;1H[K[H[mtop - 08:58:29 up 22:57, 4 users, load average: 0.00, 0.11, 0.18[m[39;49m[K
Tasks:[m[39;49m[1m 113 [m[39;49mtotal,[m[39;49m[1m 1 [m[39;49mrunning,[m[39;49m[1m 110 [m[39;49msleeping,[m[39;49m[1m 0 [m[39;49mstopped,[m[39;49m[1m 2 [m[39;49mzombie[m[39;49m[K
Cpu(s):[m[39;49m[1m 1.3% [m[39;49muser,[m[39;49m[1m 3.3% [m[39;49msystem,[m[39;49m[1m 0.0% [m[39;49mnice,[m[39;49m[1m 95.4% [m[39;49midle[m[39;49m[K
Mem: [m[39;49m[1m 762936k [m[39;49mtotal,[m[39;49m[1m 739472k [m[39;49mused,[m[39;49m[1m 23464k [m[39;49mfree,[m[39;49m[1m 103468k [m[39;49mbuffers[m[39;49m[K
Swap:[m[39;49m[1m 1052216k [m[39;49mtotal,[m[39;49m[1m 2872k [m[39;49mused,[m[39;49m[1m 1049344k [m[39;49mfree,[m[39;49m[1m 290904k [m[39;49mcached[m[39;49m[K
[6;1H
[7m PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND [m[39;49m[K
[m[1m 5410 bret 15 0 1088 1088 848 R 1.6 0.1 0:00.18 top [m[39;49m[K
[m 8 root 14 0 0 0 0 S 1.3 0.0 6:10.18 kjournald [m[39;49m[K
[m12101 bret 11 0 92316 90m 22m S 1.0 12.1 21:18.23 mozilla-bin [m[39;49m[K
[m 1163 bret 10 0 1924 1924 1124 S 0.3 0.3 0:03.55 famd [m[39;49m[K
[m 1 root 8 0 508 508 456 S 0.0 0.1 0:05.05 init [m[39;49m[K
[m 2 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.74 keventd [m[39;49m[K
[m 3 root 19 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.83 ksoftirqd_CPU0 [m[39;49m[K
[m 4 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.79 kswapd [m[39;49m[K
[m 5 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 bdflush [m[39;49m[K
[m 6 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:19.23 kupdated [m[39;49m[K
[m 7 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 i2oevtd [m[39;49m[K
[m 108 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd [m[39;49m[K
[m 112 root 8 0 308 304 264 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 udevd [m[39;49m[K
[m 207 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 2:36.95 kjournald [m[39;49m[K
[m 209 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 kjournald [m[39;49m[K
[m 210 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:14.32 kjournald [m[39;49m[K
[m 211 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.11 kjournald [m[39;49m[K
[m 212 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.08 kjournald [m[39;49m[K
[m 729 daemon 9 0 444 444 376 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 portmap [m[39;49m[K
[m 805 root 9 0 804 804 700 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.72 syslogd [m[39;49m[K
[m 808 root 9 0 1272 1272 448 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.39 klogd [m[39;49m[K
[m 824 root 9 0 3032 3032 1488 S 0.0 0.4 0:34.69 cupsd [m[39;49m[K
[m 842 messageb 9 0 992 992 872 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.07 dbus-daemon-1 [m[39;49m[K
[m 972 root 9 0 728 728 656 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 inetd [m[39;49m[K
[m 981 root 9 0 968 968 856 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.94 atalkd [m[39;49m[K
[m 985 root 9 0 692 692 596 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 papd [m[39;49m[K
[m 987 root 9 0 1260 1260 1056 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.03 afpd [m[39;49m[K
[m 1063 postgres 9 0 2196 2196 2112 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.11 postmaster [m[39;49m[K
[m 1068 postgres 9 0 2976 2976 1936 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.04 postmaster [m[39;49m[K
[m 1069 postgres 9 0 2044 2044 1936 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.04 postmaster [m[39;49m[K
[m 1076 postgres 9 0 1700 1700 1372 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.45 pg_autovacuum [m[39;49m[K[6;1H[K[39;1H[?25h[?7h
ps -axu --sort:rss | tail
bret 1373 0.0 2.1 31352 16264 ? S Feb21 0:00 nautilus --sm-config-prefix /nautilus-RtzxPF/ --sm-client-id 11c0a80233000110632567300000018510004 --screen 0 --no-default-window
bret 1374 0.0 2.1 31352 16264 ? S Feb21 0:00 nautilus --sm-config-prefix /nautilus-RtzxPF/ --sm-client-id 11c0a80233000110632567300000018510004 --screen 0 --no-default-window
bret 1375 0.0 2.1 31352 16264 ? S Feb21 0:00 nautilus --sm-config-prefix /nautilus-RtzxPF/ --sm-client-id 11c0a80233000110632567300000018510004 --screen 0 --no-default-window
bret 1376 0.0 2.1 31352 16264 ? S Feb21 0:00 nautilus --sm-config-prefix /nautilus-RtzxPF/ --sm-client-id 11c0a80233000110632567300000018510004 --screen 0 --no-default-window
bret 1669 0.3 5.9 59844 45248 ? S Feb21 4:51 /usr/bin/konqueror --profile webbrowsing
root 1228 17.4 10.0 96504 76796 ? S< Feb21 240:32 /usr/X11R6/bin/X :0 -audit 0 -auth /var/lib/gdm/:0.Xauth -nolisten tcp vt7
bret 12101 2.1 12.0 109272 92304 ? S Feb21 21:18 /usr/lib/mozilla/mozilla-bin
bret 12116 0.0 12.0 109272 92304 ? S Feb21 0:01 /usr/lib/mozilla/mozilla-bin
bret 12117 0.0 12.0 109272 92304 ? S Feb21 0:06 /usr/lib/mozilla/mozilla-bin
bret 12119 0.0 12.0 109272 92304 ? S Feb21 0:25 /usr/lib/mozilla/mozilla-bin
Does that appear okay?
It seems to me to be using too much memory, for what is running, and,
whilst the second data line of the free command, shows 408MB to be used
as cached (if I read that correctly), the first line of the data output
for that, shows only 23MB as free, and 284MB as cached, which is less
than either of the numbers on the second line.
An issue here, is that the memory usage appears to have increased since
yesterday, when I was running a higher load, in terms of open browser
windows and tabs, and, in a previous session when I had similar memory
usage displayed, when I tried to load open office, it gutted itself and
had to be re-installed. I had assumed that that was due to memory
overload.
I do not know whether it was a similar scenario when I was previously
running Konqueror, and in the process of an operation using Konqueror,
the system committed suicide and had to be re-installed (re-install of
Debian Sarge, not just an application). At that time, when Konqeruor
went awry, and I went to a text console (<CTRL><ALT><Fx>), I got
continuous scrolling of a line stating that the ext3 journalling was
failing. I had to try to go to a text console that way, as I ccould not
get an xterm window to open, in X-Windows, at that time. There was no
login prompt displayed, just that line of scrolling text. Then, the
system progressively chopped itself up from the inside, and in the end,
would not boot. That was in the last couple of weeks.
A problem with all of this, is that it appears that, in running Debian
Sarge, and/or, in using Mozilla, the proposition of being able to leave
a Linux box running indefinitely, relative to the famous "run Windows 9x
for 29 days, and it is guaranteed to have a system crash", does not
appear to be valid, as it appears that I cannot run Debian Sarge as a
workstation, for more than a few hours, or, maybe, even up to a day,
without needing to reboot it, to free up memory.
And, I am concerned that reinstalling the operating system may become
something like a weekly or monthly requirement.
I am not trying to go into trolling - I believe that I have a problem,
with memory not being properly released, and it appears to make Debian
Sarge, unstable, when Debian Sarge is used as a workstation.
I assume that Debian Sarge does not have a utility that can be run, that
frees up memory that is not being directly used by running applications
and running utilities?
For the problems involved, I think it would be better to not have the
memory caching, as the instability is more of a sacrifice than the
benefit of faster loading of applications via caching, that has been
mentioned as the reason for the cached memory. I am assuming that it is
that the memory allocated for caching, is what is taking up all of the
memory that is used, that is not directly used by running applications
and utilities.
--
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............
"So once you do know what the question actually is,
you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
Chapter 28 of
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
A Trilogy In Four Parts",
written by Douglas Adams,
published by Pan Books, 1992
....................................................
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