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On Mon, Mar 13, 2006 at 03:01:15PM +0800, P.V.Anthony wrote: |
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> |
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> With kernel 2.6.14 it works fine. |
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> |
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> Starting from 2.6.15 upto 2.6.15-r7, it will hang after a few days. |
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> |
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I have noticed a similar problem that appears to be a kind of memory |
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leak. I had upgraded both my desktop (amd64) and laptop (x86) from |
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2.6.14 to 2.6.15 a few weeks ago. After the upgrade, I started noticing |
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that first thing in the morning or after long periods of the system being |
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idle, the memory usage would climb to around 550MB. This seemed odd, as |
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my normal memory usage is around 120MB (using conky as my system monitor). |
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|
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I tried to identify what process was consuming all that ram, but nothing |
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looked out of the ordinary. As I started wokring on the machine, the |
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memory usage would slowly go down over the course of a few hours, and |
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level off around 200MB (which is still more than normal). |
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|
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I have noticed this behavior on both my AMD64 box and my x86 laptop, |
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using 2.6.15 from both ck-sources and gentoo-sources. I did read the |
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release notes in gentoo-sources and over the life of 2.6.15 there have |
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been a couple memory leak fixes introduced (one for the mouse dev and one |
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for SCSI). Neither of these fixes seemed to make a difference (I first |
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noticed the issue with 2.6.15-r1, then 2.6.15-r5 and still in 2.6.15-r7). |
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|
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Some of the steps I took to identify the root cause were to close all |
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applications, shutdown X, stop all non essitinal services and checking |
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the memory usage after each change. I did see small drops in memory, but |
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even with everything shutdown, the system would still be consuming 350MB+ |
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of ram. And again, after starting everything back up, I would still see |
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375MB+ or ram usage, but as I used the system it would tail off to around |
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200MB. |
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|
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I'm not sure this is a true memory leak, as most of the memory is |
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reclaimed after a period of system usage. Most memory leaks I have run |
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across just consume ram until there is nothing left and the system hangs, |
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which sounds similar to what you are seeing. |
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|
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You did not specify what types of errors, dmesg output or anything else |
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about your crash, so it could likely be something completely different. |
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I was planning on posting about my expirence with 2.6.15 anyways, and |
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your issue at a very high level sounded like it might be related. Maybe |
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you could check your ram usage after the system has been up (and |
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possibly idle) for a long time (I have seen the memory climb after |
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about 8 hours or so of being idle). |
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|
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This weekend I went back to 2.6.14 on both systems, and I have not seen the |
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strange memory usage issue yet. |
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|
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I am not sure how to go about isolating this issue any further to be able |
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to file a proper bug report. I don't think I have enough information at this |
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time, and I can't seem to find any method of identifying what is using the |
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large chunks of ram when idle, and then freeing as the system is used. |
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|
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Regards, |
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Brett |
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-- |
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