Re: sysfs_dir_cache growing out of control

Greg KH
2007-08-24T01:00:11Z

On Thu, Aug 23, 2007 at 08:44:10PM -0400, Joel Fuster wrote:
> Greg KH wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 22, 2007 at 11:56:44PM -0400, Joel Fuster wrote:
>>> Joel Fuster wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>> I am running 2.6.22.3. For reasons that escape me, over time (days) the
>>>> sysfs_dir_cache, dentry, and inode_cache SLUB entries grow until they
>>>> consume all the memory on my system, requiring a reboot.
>> Hm, those items should consume all the memory, but it should be freed if
>> you have memory pressure from other places. Does it cause the machine
>> to lock up, or you just got scared when seeing them?
> Right. The problem is that the memory never seems to get freed no matter
> what I do. I've tried setting /proc/sys/vm/vfs_cache_pressure to 10000,
> but after a few days all my programs are running out of swap and I have to
> reboot to get things back to a usable state.
>
>> Oh, and does the same thing happen if you do not use SLUB, but rather
>> the older SLAB?
>
> OK I just rebuilt 2.6.22.3 with SLAB and I seem to be getting the same
> result..obviously I haven't waited several days, but
> sysfs_dir_cache/dentry/inode_cache grow continuously when scanbuttond is
> running, and stop growing when it isn't.

Do you have a pointer to the scanbuttond source code? I'll try to take
a look at this tomorrow.

thanks,

greg k-h