[Bridge] br: memory squeeze!

[Bridge] br: memory squeeze!

[TC Hough]

I set up a bridge for my network and I'm having some trouble.  At first 
everything worked great, but after about 3 days of continuous bridging, 
my bridge machine died.  Approximately once a second, the message: "br: 
memory squeeze!" would appear on the console.  Keyboard input was mostly 
frozen, as well.  I could switch virtual consoles, but I couldn't type.  
No traffic would pass through the bridge.  When I rebooted, everything 
seemed fine.

I don't have a whole lot of memory on the bridge machine, but I feel 
like it should be sufficient, since bridging is all it ever does and I 
have plenty of swap space.  The system log doesn't should anything I 
thought to be abnormal.  The memory squeeze messages were not logged.  
Here's the output of /proc/meminfo:

        total:    used:    free:  shared: buffers:  cached:
Mem:  29655040 28917760   737280        0 13750272  6123520
Swap: 67104768   434176 66670592
MemTotal:        28960 kB
MemFree:           720 kB
MemShared:           0 kB
Buffers:         13428 kB
Cached:           5700 kB
SwapCached:        280 kB
Active:           4344 kB
Inactive:        18036 kB
HighTotal:           0 kB
HighFree:            0 kB
LowTotal:        28960 kB
LowFree:           720 kB
SwapTotal:       65532 kB
SwapFree:        65108 kB

Any suggestions?

TC

Re: [Bridge] br: memory squeeze!

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Wed, 21 Apr 2004 12:00:07 -0500
TC Hough <tchough@austin.rr.com> wrote:

> I set up a bridge for my network and I'm having some trouble.  At first 
> everything worked great, but after about 3 days of continuous bridging, 
> my bridge machine died.  Approximately once a second, the message: "br: 
> memory squeeze!" would appear on the console.  Keyboard input was mostly 
> frozen, as well.  I could switch virtual consoles, but I couldn't type.  
> No traffic would pass through the bridge.  When I rebooted, everything 
> seemed fine.


You have a memory leak in the kernel. What kernel and distro are you
using.  Also, what kind of NIC's and other interfaces (tun, ppp, etc).

Also, what is the state of the bridge?	br showstp br0
and the forwarding table?	br showmacs br0

> I don't have a whole lot of memory on the bridge machine, but I feel 
> like it should be sufficient, since bridging is all it ever does and I 
> have plenty of swap space.  The system log doesn't should anything I 
> thought to be abnormal.  The memory squeeze messages were not logged.  
> Here's the output of /proc/meminfo:
> 
>         total:    used:    free:  shared: buffers:  cached:
> Mem:  29655040 28917760   737280        0 13750272  6123520
> Swap: 67104768   434176 66670592
> MemTotal:        28960 kB
> MemFree:           720 kB
> MemShared:           0 kB
> Buffers:         13428 kB
> Cached:           5700 kB
> SwapCached:        280 kB
> Active:           4344 kB
> Inactive:        18036 kB
> HighTotal:           0 kB
> HighFree:            0 kB
> LowTotal:        28960 kB
> LowFree:           720 kB
> SwapTotal:       65532 kB
> SwapFree:        65108 kB
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> TC
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Bridge mailing list
> Bridge@lists.osdl.org
> http://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/bridge

Re: [Bridge] br: memory squeeze!

[Ben Greear]

Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Apr 2004 12:00:07 -0500
> TC Hough <tchough@austin.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>>I set up a bridge for my network and I'm having some trouble.  At first 
>>everything worked great, but after about 3 days of continuous bridging, 
>>my bridge machine died.  Approximately once a second, the message: "br: 
>>memory squeeze!" would appear on the console.  Keyboard input was mostly 
>>frozen, as well.  I could switch virtual consoles, but I couldn't type.  
>>No traffic would pass through the bridge.  When I rebooted, everything 
>>seemed fine.
> 
> 
> 
> You have a memory leak in the kernel. What kernel and distro are you
> using.  Also, what kind of NIC's and other interfaces (tun, ppp, etc).
> 
> Also, what is the state of the bridge?	br showstp br0
> and the forwarding table?	br showmacs br0

I agree it is probably a memory leak, but it is *possible* to get this
error if you just run out of available memory.  I have been able to
reproduce this type of error by setting my send/receive packet socket
buffers very high and then flooding 200 connections with traffic, for example.
(I had a 256MB RAM machine)

You might want to make sure that your netdev-backlog settings are not too
big, for example.

Thanks,
Ben

-- 
Ben Greear <greearb@candelatech.com>
Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com