Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: 2.4.20-18 size-4096 memory leaks | From | "Stephen C. Tweedie" <> | Date | 26 Nov 2003 11:57:05 +0000 |
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Hi,
On Wed, 2003-11-26 at 10:57, Jean Delvare wrote:
> I just wanted to let you know that I have been experiencing similar > leaks. So far, I wasn't enable to find where the leak was, but your > theory matches my observations: > > 1* On two systems running 2.4.20-2.4.22 kernels, I observed that the > free memory as reported by top was going down regularly, by blocks of 4 > or 8kB at an average rate of 90kB/min. Sometimes the value would > stabilize, but I couldn't understand why. What was lost as "free" > memory > increased "buffers" from the same amount.
That's not a leak, it simply sounds like cache effects. atime updates result in journal commits under ext3, and those use at least a couple of buffers at a time (one for the metadata descriptor block in the journal, one for the journal commit.) Those aren't leaks --- they are temporary use of cache, and once the IO has complete the memory can be immediately reclaimed by the kernel if it is needed for anything else.
Cheers, Stephen
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