From: Chris Friesen <cfriesen@nortelnetworks.com>
To: "Kristian Sørensen" <ks@cs.aau.dk>
Cc: root@chaos.analogic.com, andre@tomt.net,
Kasper Sandberg <lkml@metanurb.dk>,
LKML Mailinglist <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
umbrella@cs.aau.dk
Subject: Re: Gigantic memory leak in linux-2.6.[789]!
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 13:33:14 -0600 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <4179607A.8030204@nortelnetworks.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <41795E69.9090909@cs.aau.dk>
Kristian Sørensen wrote:
> Anyway - How does this work in practice? Does the file system
> implementation use a wrapper for kfree or?
When an app faults in new memory and there is no unused memory, the system will
page out apps and/or filesystem data from the page cache so the memory can be
given to the app requesting it.
> Is there any way to force instant free of kernel memory - when freed?
It's not free, it's in use by the page cache. This is a performance feature--we
try and keep around as much stuff as possible that might be needed by running apps.
> Else it is quite hard testing for possible memory leaks in our Umbrella
> kernel module ... :-/
Such is life. As a crude workaround, on a swapless system you can start one or
two memory hogs and they will force the system to free up as much memory as
possible.
Chris
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2004-10-23 3:45 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 17+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2004-10-22 14:13 Gigantic memory leak in linux-2.6.[789]! Kristian Sørensen
2004-10-22 14:32 ` Kasper Sandberg
2004-10-22 15:07 ` Richard B. Johnson
2004-10-22 15:50 ` Kristian Sørensen
2004-10-22 16:12 ` Richard B. Johnson
2004-10-22 19:24 ` Kristian Sørensen
2004-10-22 19:20 ` Richard B. Johnson
2004-10-22 19:33 ` Chris Friesen [this message]
2004-10-22 16:15 ` Gene Heskett
2004-10-22 16:28 ` Andre Tomt
2004-10-22 16:32 ` Chris Friesen
2004-10-23 0:51 ` David Lang
2004-10-24 14:14 ` Bill Davidsen
2004-10-24 16:04 ` Tommy Reynolds
2004-10-25 22:11 ` Bill Davidsen
2004-10-25 22:47 ` David Lang
2004-10-23 1:44 ` Bernd Eckenfels
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