Memleak in basic system

On 28.9.16 23:16, wimpunk wrote:
> On 28/09/16 20:03, Tauno Voipio wrote:
>> On 28.9.16 19:24, wimpunk wrote:
>>> On 22/09/16 10:51, wimpunk wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I'm stuck with a nasty problem.  I'm running an 4.4.13 based kernel with
>>>> a busybox on an ARM-system but it seems to leak memory... during the
>>>> working hours.
>>>> I know it is not the best way to do but I've monitoring the MemFree
>>>> value from /proc/meminfo  and I'm losing 2M/hour.  It's not that big but
>>>> having 100M memory free makes it crash after two days.  Or at least what
>>>> I think makes it crash, I need more monitored data to be sure.
>>>>
>>>> So I'm wondering: how would you monitor such kind of problem?  How to
>>>> find out if it is a kernel issue or related to some running program?
>>>>
>>>> Kind regards,
>>>>
>>>> wimpunk.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> All,
>>>
>>> Thanks for the suggestions.  It looks like it was just some normal linux
>>> actions which were going on.  Letting the system run for a week showed
>>> us no memleak.  MemFree just goes a little up and down and we were
>>> worrying to early.  So I was just panicking a little to early.  Now can
>>> add our normal programs and try to find out which one is leaking.  We
>>> got issues on running systems so that's why I started to look at my
>>> basic system in the first place.
>>>
>>> Kind regards,
>>>
>>> wimpunk.
>>>
>>
>> Get yourself a good book on Linux kernel and read the chapters about
>> memory management, so you'll understand. Unused RAM is excess RAM.
>>
>> One possible book is: Understanding the Linux Kernel.
>>
>
> Nah, I just needed more coffee and so I would watch the correct values.
> I made the wrong associations and thought the problem was bigger because
> of the scaling of the monitoring system.
> Although, thanks for the suggestion about the book.  Next thing on my
> shortlist is fixing a bug in a usb wifi kernel module.
>

For that, there is another book, Linux Device Drivers by Corbet et al.

-- 

-TV