Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 24 Jul 1997 09:13:57 -0400 | From | "Furquan A. Ansari" <> | Subject | memory problems |
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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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