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Subjectmemory problems
Hi,

I am running linux kernel version 2.0.29 (Still in the 2.0
series
because of the ATM patch :( ). I seem to be running into
problems with Linux's memory management. I have an X based
application (with audio and video) that requires a lot of memory. It
works
fine for a certian period of time and crashes (dumps core). It has
turned
out be that the seg fault occurs in a malloc routine. The application
can no longer get memory !! inspite of the fact that there is 128 Mbyte
of
SWAP available and NONE has been used. The output of "free" indicates
that
most of the memory is sitting in "cache" or "buffers". As I understand,
this
memory should be available for reuse, but just does not show up under
"free".

"Top" indicates that the application uses only about 5% of the
total
memory at a given time. I was wondering if there is some problem with
the kernel implementation (this particular version) wherein the cached
memory
does not get released for reuse ???.



The same application also runs under solaris without such a
problem.
One possible problem I could think of is that there could be a memory
leak
somewhere in the libraries, but what bothers me the most is that SWAP is
not
being used. Should I be doing something to force the application to use
the swap? (Note that SWAP has been turned on)

I would appreciate any response in this regard. Please cc the
mail
to me as I don't subscribe to the linux-kernel mailing list due to high
volume.

Cheers,

---
Furquan Ansari Phone (off): 609-951-2965
NEC USA Inc., C&C Research Labs, (Res): 609-936-1248
Princeton, NJ, 08540 fax : 609-951-2499
furquan@ccrl.nj.nec.com

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