[mythtv-users] BE (0.25) memory leak?

Gavin Whitehead gavin at alabastercranium.demon.co.uk
Wed Jul 4 18:50:09 UTC 2012


On 03/07/2012 23:05, Gavin Hurlbut wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 2:50 PM, Gavin Whitehead
> <gavin at alabastercranium.demon.co.uk>  wrote:
>>      VIRT    880m
>>      RES     81m
>>      VIRT    942m
>>      RES     74m
>>      VIRT    951m
>>      RES     83m
>> So that consumed ~340MB in 15 minutes.
> How so?  your VIRT and RES numbers are saying there is no significant
> growth in mythbackend at all.
>
> Using "free memory" from free is not a good way to judge memory leaks
> in a program.  This memory includes the buffer caches and other stuff
> used by the kernel, which is almost assuredly where the memory usage
> is.  As for actual memory used by mythbackend, you have shown nothing
> that indicates that at all.  The Linux memory management system is
> complex and confusing for most users.
>
>> If I now stop and restart the BE I don't the memory back.  After the BE
>> process has been stopped the free memory reported by top stays about the
>> same.
> Of course it is.  The kernel is keeping the memory for its buffers and caching.
>
> I don't see a problem here.
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I starter 'worrying' about the memory because after recording stuff the 
GUI applications (FE, Firefox, XBMC) seemed sluggish.  And after a 
reboot they seemed 'nippy'.  Also, the only time I've ever noticed my 
system use swap space is after 'free memory' had dropped to almost zero 
(during/after recording).
I'll play some more and try and convince myself that I am imaging the 
sluggishness.

Thanks for the response.

Gav


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