From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from psmtp.com (na3sys010amx186.postini.com [74.125.245.186]) by kanga.kvack.org (Postfix) with SMTP id C57E26B0036 for ; Fri, 15 Mar 2013 04:41:52 -0400 (EDT) Received: by mail-gh0-f175.google.com with SMTP id g18so563223ghb.20 for ; Fri, 15 Mar 2013 01:41:51 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <5142DEC5.7010206@gmail.com> Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:41:41 +0800 From: Simon Jeons MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: Inactive memory keep growing and how to release it? References: <20130314101403.GB11636@dhcp22.suse.cz> In-Reply-To: <20130314101403.GB11636@dhcp22.suse.cz> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: To: Michal Hocko Cc: Lenky Gao , Greg KH , "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , "devel@linuxdriverproject.org" , "olaf@aepfle.de" , "apw@canonical.com" , "andi@firstfloor.org" , "akpm@linux-foundation.org" , "linux-mm@kvack.org" On 03/14/2013 06:14 PM, Michal Hocko wrote: > On Mon 04-03-13 17:52:22, Lenky Gao wrote: >> Hi, >> >> When i just run a test on Centos 6.2 as follows: >> >> #!/bin/bash >> >> while true >> do >> >> file="/tmp/filetest" >> >> echo $file >> >> dd if=/dev/zero of=${file} bs=512 count=204800 &> /dev/null >> >> sleep 5 >> done >> >> the inactive memory keep growing: >> >> #cat /proc/meminfo | grep Inactive\(fi >> Inactive(file): 420144 kB >> ... >> #cat /proc/meminfo | grep Inactive\(fi >> Inactive(file): 911912 kB >> ... >> #cat /proc/meminfo | grep Inactive\(fi >> Inactive(file): 1547484 kB >> ... >> >> and i cannot reclaim it: > How did you try to reclaim the memory? How much memory is still free? > Are you above watermaks (/proc/zoneinfo will tell you more) > >> # cat /proc/meminfo | grep Inactive\(fi >> Inactive(file): 1557684 kB >> # echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches >> # cat /proc/meminfo | grep Inactive\(fi >> Inactive(file): 1520832 kB >> >> I have tested on other version kernel, such as 2.6.30 and .6.11, the >> problom also exists. >> >> When in the final situation, i cannot kmalloc a larger contiguous >> memory, especially in interrupt context. > This could be related to the memory fragmentation and your kernel seem > to be too large to have memory compaction which helps a lot in that > area. > >> Can you give some tips to avoid this? > One way would be to increase /proc/sys/vm/min_free_kbytes which will > enlarge watermaks so the reclaim starts sooner. > >> PS: >> # uname -a >> Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Dec 6 >> 19:48:22 GMT 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux > This is really an old kernel and also a distribution one which might > contain a lot of patches on top of the core kernel. I would suggest to > contact Redhat or try to reproduce the issue with the vanilla and What's the meaning of vanilla? > up-to-date kernel and report here. -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org