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SubjectRe: My memory is rusty
OS rust, or OS-decay as some prefer to call it is generally more prevalent in
more integrated OSs such as Windows95 (or MacOS). That is, where the OS
itself keeps track of things such as installed programs, has a central
registry etc etc... all this can turn into serious rustage when badly behaved
programs run and are installed. Also, in OSes which do not have a protected
memory space, badly behaved apps can drain the system of memory (ie. not
freeing the memory back up - even when the program ends)

It is my understanding that since in Linux the programs are relatively
isolated, and since we have such a great memory model, the only way that we
might see gradual OS-decay/rust is if the kernel starts to leak memory (which
can be a bitch to debug :-)

If this is happening, it is true that people with lots of memory may not
notice, especially if it is a gradual leak. But I can say with confidence
that I don't think we have that problem.... I have run Linux 2.1.95 on a
system with 16Mb of memory for over 10 days with fairly heavy load without
problems... and I have been keeping an eye on the memory data... no unusual
drops.

Hope this helps, I've said enough :-)

Cheers,
Raj - nopzor -

Bill Metzenthen wrote:

> Some time recently (I can't remember exactly when :), I think it was
> P. J. Plauger who observed that modern operating systems rust. I
> other words after using the things for months it is often necessary to
> re-install the things to get the performance back to a satisfactory
> level. This seems to be a complaint against MicroSoft operating
> systems and their ilk.
>
> Somewhere in the 2.1.xx series (maybe 2.1.4x, but I'm not sure) of
> Linux kernels I noticed that rapid rusting was setting in. After
> using the system for a time, which could be less than an hour, the
> performance would become very sluggish due to swapping and only
> rebooting seems to restore system performance.
>
> Of course there were a few disastrous kernels around 2.1.90, but we'll
> forget about those...
>
> I have a feeling that the rusting problem has become worse as the
> kernel versions have progressed but it's only recently that I've
> started trying to get some measure of the effect so I can't be sure.
>
> I've recently tried a few things to see if the cause of the rusting
> might become apparent but before I really roll my sleeves up it seems
> like a good idea to ask here. It's likely that someone already knows
> the answer and/or can point out something silly I am doing...
>
> Don't laugh, but my system is currently and 80486 with 8 Mbyte of RAM.
> My observation of most messages which mention configuration is that
> most people have much more RAM than this and might not be seeing the
> problem.
>
> To rule out hardware problems, I compiled and installed 2.0.33 and
> observe that the rusting is either much slower or doesn't exist with
> that kernel.
>
> Cheers,
> Bill
>
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