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From: Ross Biro <ross.biro@gmail.com>
To: David Ashley <dash@xdr.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Cached memory never gets released
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 08:49:09 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <8783be6604062408493cacc648@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <200406241448.i5OEmK60025648@xdr.com>

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:48:20 -0700, David Ashley <dash@xdr.com> wrote:

> So we're snowballing but I don't know what mechanism is supposed to actually
> free the cached pages when the system is low on memory. Any advice would
> be welcome.
> 

You may want to examine /proc/meminfo, /proc/slabinfo, and the output
of sysrq-m.

mm/vmscan.c (kswapd) is responsible for freeing most memory.  The
routine you are probably most interested in is shrink_cache.

I would check to make sure that the pages in the icache are backed by
a mapping and if so, that they are clean.   If either of those two
conditions are not met, then the page cannot be thrown away.

  reply	other threads:[~2004-06-24 15:51 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 11+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2004-06-24 14:48 Cached memory never gets released David Ashley
2004-06-24 15:49 ` Ross Biro [this message]
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2004-06-29 16:18 David Ashley
2004-06-30  1:25 ` Ross Biro
2004-06-29 15:07 David Ashley
2004-06-29 16:00 ` Ross Biro
2004-06-27  3:24 David Ashley
2004-06-24 17:14 David Ashley
2004-06-23 18:35 David Ashley
2004-06-23 18:44 ` Doug McNaught
2004-06-23 15:31 David Ashley

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