[mythtv-users] Re: Is this a memory leak?

[Michael J. Lynch]

Except from whitepaper:

This poses a problem for anyone wanting to use Linux as a communications 
server handling a large number of connections or queueing a large number 
of messages.  The reason is that calling the kernel memory allocator 
from a STREAMS driver will not cause disk buffers to be released to 
satisfy the allocation request.  Thus, if memory is nearly full of disk 
buffers and the like there is only a small amount of memory left for 
control blocks and messages.

This means that an application that manages a large number of 
connections or sends a large number of messages, or both, can run fine 
if started just after a reboot, but will fail due to memory allocation 
failures when started later once memory has been committed to disk 
buffers and other cached items.


Simon Kenyon wrote:

>On Tuesday 11 January 2005 13:10, Michael J. Lynch wrote:
>  
>
>>I don't know if this has anything to do with what you are seeing but
>>recently I had occasion to look at the disk caching code for linux and
>>it turns out that linux will  use ALL available memory for disk cache
>>and only release it back to the system under very specific circumstances.
>>    
>>
>what else should it do with it - leave it unused? that would be a waste
>--
>simon
>_______________________________________________
>mythtv-users mailing list
>mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>
>  
>


-- 
Michael J. Lynch

What if the hokey pokey IS what it's all about -- author unknown