Re: Memory leak in 2.0.x and 2.1.63 !?

Chris Adams (cadams@ro.com)
Sun, 16 Nov 1997 15:22:18 -0600 (CST)

Thanks to Mark Hemment, I see that what I thought was a memory leak is
just memory in use but not really reported. When I made a filesystem
and saw 37000k of memory disappear, I had 270000k of buffers. What is
not counted in the buffers is the buffer heads. If I clear out the
buffers, the other memory comes back too.

Maybe there should be some kind of pseudo process in /proc that shows
kernel stats like memory in use, maybe CPU time, etc.

However, I still see what I think is a memory leak on 2.0.3x on my old
news server. I did not see this with 2.0.29. It has been up and
running for four days now with 2.0.32-pre1, and this is what free
reports:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 128108 126420 1688 35244 8896 36640
-/+ buffers: 80884 47224
Swap: 66556 3600 62956

while adding up the SIZE column from "ps amx" only gives 62156. Is this
more memory in use somewhere in the kernel? When I first start up, I
don't see this, but the amount of memory used not counting buffers
continues to grow. What changed in 2.0.30 that could have caused this?

-- 
Chris Adams - cadams@ro.com
System Administrator - Renaissance Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.