*BSD News Article 97090


Return to BSD News archive

Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mira.net.au!news.netspace.net.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!uunet!in3.uu.net!194.162.162.196!newsfeed.nacamar.de!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.dfw.net!news.onramp.net!news.nkn.net!news.panther.net!nemesis!uhclem.ami
From: uhclem.ami@nemesis.lonestar.org (Frank Durda IV)
Subject: Anyone noticed a VM leak with vnodes in 2.2.1?
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
Organization: The Big Blue Box
Message-ID: <EB8CoG.Do7@nemesis.lonestar.org>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 02:38:39 GMT
Lines: 40
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:42361

An associate has an experimental news proxy that he has developed that
runs on FreeBSD (2.2.1 but needs to be migrated to 2.2.2 since it has
an AHC2940 controller).  He has run into a problem that after 20 hours
or so of operation, the software will stop working or will terminate.
This is a user-level application, with no privs.  At this point, no
commands can be executed (including shutdown) because the system says
there isn't enough memory, or other cryptic low-memory-related error
messages.

There is just the one application on the system, and when a couple hundred
people start talking to it, the system is hammered pretty good.  Until
the event occurs, the application performance seems normal, although
it is possible there is a gradual decline in performance.  The low/no
memory situation persists even when the application is made to exit or
exits on its own.

He says he has written a test program that simply opens, creates, deletes
and closes lots of files and if this one program is left running for around
40 hours, the system will end up in the same can't-do-anything state.

This platform is a Pentium 133, 128Meg of RAM, 2GB hard disk.  Because
this is a USENET news caching system, free disk space is always extremely
low on at least one partition, since the program makes room for a new
article only when the space is required, nuking existing articles based
on a LRU algorithm.

Before I spend a lot of time independently verifying this problem
on 2.2.2 and current and doing a send-pr, has anyone heard of any leaks
in UBC memory management of vnodes in 2.2.1?  There was one open problem
recently reported for 2.2.2 that sounds like it might be similar, but it
didn't really have any specifics.

Thanks in advance.


Frank Durda IV - only these addresses work:|"The Knights who say "LETNi"
   <uhclem.pri%nemesis.lonestar.org>       | demand... A SEGMENT REGISTER!!!"
or <uhclem.pri%nemesis%rwsystr.nkn.net>    |"A what?"
These Anti-spam addresses expire in 28 days|"LETNi! LETNi! LETNi!" - 1983