From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S266597AbUFWSfd (ORCPT ); Wed, 23 Jun 2004 14:35:33 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S266483AbUFWSfd (ORCPT ); Wed, 23 Jun 2004 14:35:33 -0400 Received: from [66.199.228.3] ([66.199.228.3]:51727 "EHLO xdr.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S266597AbUFWSfa (ORCPT ); Wed, 23 Jun 2004 14:35:30 -0400 Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 11:35:29 -0700 From: David Ashley Message-Id: <200406231835.i5NIZTSJ019899@xdr.com> To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Cached memory never gets released Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org There is some new information that might be useful. The cache memory lower limit seems to be going up by 1 or 2 megabytes whenever the kernel kills the XFree86 process: Jun 23 11:20:16 __alloc_pages: 0-order allocation failed (gfp=0x1d2/0) Jun 23 11:20:16 VM: killing process XFree86 Could it be when the kernel kills a process for trying to use up too much memory, the pages used by the process get left in some locked state so can never be reused? This is the sort of behaviour we're seeing, it is very reproduceable. Note this is kernel 2.4.23. -Dave