Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 18 Mar 2000 02:13:16 -0700 (MST) | From | Craig Kulesa <> | Subject | Unfreed kernel buffers (fsck and 2.3.99-pre*) |
| |
Summary: After running fsck, a large block of kernel "buffer" memory (seen in /proc/meminfo or 'free') is allocated in 2.3.99. This large block of RAM is _not_ freed under memory stress, and induces very heavy paging. A reboot seems necessary to recover.
System has 32 MB, i586, SCSI disk on VLB. Kernel config is available here: http://loke.as.arizona.edu/~ckulesa/syrinx-config
This system performed an fsck (version 1.15) on the root filesystem at boot time. Afterwards, a large block of RAM was allocated as kernel buffers:
total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 30364 29564 800 0 12416 8084 -/+ buffers/cache: 9064 21300 Swap: 32764 328 32436
After loading Netscape, gimp, and emacs -- putting the system under substantial memory load, this block of buffer memory _was never deallocated_, causing intensive swapping and a very high system load:
total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 30364 29480 884 0 12176 8188 -/+ buffers/cache: 9116 21248 Swap: 32764 17400 15364
This behavior after fsck is reliably reproducible on several machines that were tested, running 2.3.99-pre1 or pre2-3. System performance was only recovered by rebooting.
Any ideas? Patches? :)
Many thanks,
Craig Kulesa ckulesa@as.arizona.edu
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |