This script seems to reveal a memory leak of some sort in the buffer
code. I have run it on the same filesystem mounted as both ext2 and ext3
under 2.4.21-pre1, and in both cases get decreasing free memory and
increasing buffers. The line which activates the problem is the echo
which is directed to testlog.
#!/bin/bash
RUN=1
while [ 1 ]; do
MEMFREE=`head -2 /proc/meminfo | tail -1 | awk -F ' ' '{ print $4 }'`
BUFFERS=`head -2 /proc/meminfo | tail -1 | awk -F ' ' '{ print $6 }'`
echo -e -n "\rIteration $ITERATION. MemFree is $MEMFREE. Buffers is $BUFFERS"
echo "Run $ITERATION beginning at `date`" > /testlog
ITERATION=$(($ITERATION+1))
done
I think I can also shed some light on a possible area to look at. I
originally found the problem while examining what appeared to be a
memory leak in swsusp. I set things up to bug on a page allocation where
the memory leak seemed to occur, and the page allocation was being
called from __pollwait in fs/select.c.
Hope this is helpful.
Nigel
-- Nigel Cunningham 495 St Georges Road South, Hastings 4201, New ZealandBe diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth. -- 2 Timothy 2:14, NASB.
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