Subject: Re: Chasing down memory leaks in NetBSD or apps
To: Michael Kell Jensen <mkj@micrun.net>
From: Jeremy C. Reed <reed@reedmedia.net>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 10/06/2007 17:52:37
On Sun, 7 Oct 2007, Michael Kell Jensen wrote:

> I have i suspicion of memory leaks in NetBSD,
> or the applications.
> 
> As far as i can see, i have to enable some kernel
> debugging abilities in my kernel config.
> 
> Any advice on how to track the memory leaks down,
> and what tools to use will be appreciated.


top(1)
sort by size and/or res

ps(1)
maybe:
	ps -ax -o vsz,rss,rsz,tsiz,pid,comm | sort -n

Maybe you can see what process(es) are growing?

> My suspicion arose because of the meory counter in top going down.
> completely, when i do not do anything actively.

I see you already mention memory counter in top.

Maybe you aren't actually losing memory, but NetBSD is doing good job and 
using your memory.

See output from:

	systat bufcache

It is interesting.

Or copy and paste the memory lines from your top(1) that you are concerned 
with.

> Right know i got about 75MB free, sometimes i got as little as
> a few hundreds or thousands KB free.
> 
> I AM running a lot of applications though, but
> earlier i had about 700 MB free, and when i got back
> i only got a few megabytes left.
> 
> (T23 ibm, laptop with 1G ram)
> (NetBSD 3.1, i386)

  Jeremy C. Reed