Memory leak in kernel 2.0.32pre1.

Daniel Ryde (ryde@tripnet.se)
Sat, 15 Nov 1997 15:32:39 +0100 (CET)


The kernel memory leak discussed in some of my previous postings exist in
2.0.32pre1 too. See erlier posting:
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 15:57:58 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Kernel 2.0.31 memory leak.
and:
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 1997 10:05:51 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Kernel 2.0.31pre9 memory leak (or where did all the memory go?)

Here are some example memory statistics:
4:30pm up 42 min, 13 users, load average: 0.08, 0.06, 0.01
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 31132 30580 552 23064 4872 13856
-/+ buffers: 11852 19280
Swap: 66492 0 66492

7:06pm up 3 days, 4:18h, 14 users, load average: 0.03, 0.07, 0.02
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 31132 30444 688 18740 7928 5360
-/+ buffers: 17156 13976
Swap: 66492 512 65980

4:20pm up 4 days, 1:31h, 13 users, load average: 0.06, 0.03, 0.00
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 31132 30688 444 20032 2980 5780
-/+ buffers: 21928 9204
Swap: 66492 688 65804

3:21pm up 5 days, 33 min, 11 users, load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.00
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 31132 30264 868 19508 3300 3240
-/+ buffers: 23724 7408
Swap: 66492 564 65928

There are no processes that eats up this amount of memory. I guess this
will continue to decrease until no memory is left as it did before... I
will send a new note when it dies. I will then test 2.0.32pre4 but for two
other obvious reasons. The problem is, if it still has the the memory
leak, it will be pretty anoying to reboot every machine after a couple of
days.

These five machines acts as terminal servers and have 24 extra
serialports installed, mostly running pppd. They also have web/mail
services for the local users (aprox 600 users per machine). Loadaverage is
around 0.01. They are based around Debian 1.2 + upgrades from 1.3.
They have very sparce kernel configuration and does'nt use modules.
I use drivers/net/3c59x.c v0.46C from Donald Becker, to get the Vortex
card working better.

Hardware:
P5/100Mhz processor
32Mb of RAM
ASUS P/I-P55TP4XE Mother Board
1.2Gb QUANTUM FIREBALL1280A EIDE Hard Disk
On board IDE using DMA
3*8+2 serialports 16550A UART
3Com 3c590 Vortex 10Mbps Ethernet PCI card or
3Com 3c905 Boomerang 10Mbps Ethernet PCI card

Here is my .config:
CONFIG_NET=y
CONFIG_PCI=y
CONFIG_SYSVIPC=y
CONFIG_BINFMT_ELF=y
CONFIG_KERNEL_ELF=y
CONFIG_M586=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_FD=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_TRITON=y
CONFIG_INET=y
CONFIG_IP_FORWARD=y
CONFIG_IP_NOSR=y
CONFIG_SKB_LARGE=y
CONFIG_NETDEVICES=y
CONFIG_DUMMY=y
CONFIG_PPP=y
CONFIG_SLIP=y
CONFIG_SLIP_COMPRESSED=y
CONFIG_SLIP_SMART=y
CONFIG_NET_ETHERNET=y
CONFIG_NET_VENDOR_3COM=y
CONFIG_EL3=y
CONFIG_VORTEX=y
CONFIG_EXT2_FS=y
CONFIG_FAT_FS=y
CONFIG_MSDOS_FS=y
CONFIG_PROC_FS=y
CONFIG_SERIAL=y

Best Regards

Daniel Ryde, System Administrator
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