Stability and Memory Pressure in 8.2

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 9:13 PM,  <pgf at laptop.org> wrote:
> i wrote:
>  >
>  > i think there's definitely a sugar shell leak.  here's some
>  > partial data, gathered from a few machines on my desk right now.
>  >
>  > (be careful with the column headings -- i rearranged partway through
>  > to get separate CODE and DATA columns.)
>  >
>  > (also, don't do an absolute compare between the 708 build and the
>  > 759 build -- the latter is chock full of activites, the former
>  > has none at all.)
>  >
>  >
>  > build 708:
>  > top - 17:45:17 up 59 min,  3 users,  load average: 0.03, 0.05, 0.01
>  >  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR CODE DATA %MEM COMMAND
>  > 1741 olpc      15   0 53128  27m  13m    4  14m 12.2 python
>  >
>  > same build 708, roughly twenty minutes later:
>  > top - 18:03:16 up  1:17,  3 users,  load average: 0.01, 0.01, 0.00
>  >  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR CODE DATA %MEM COMMAND
>  > 1741 olpc      15   0 53308  28m  13m    4  14m 12.3 python
>
> another hour later on 708:
> top - 19:06:19 up  2:21,  3 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
>  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR CODE DATA %MEM COMMAND
> 1741 olpc      15   0 53576  28m  13m    4  15m 12.3 python
>
> call it 200 KB/hour?
>
>  >
>  > build 759:
>  > top - 12:20:00 up 39 min,  4 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.06, 0.11
>  >  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>  > 1461 olpc      20   0 60576  33m  14m S  0.3 14.5   0:48.38 python
>  >
>  > same build 759, almost two hours later:
>  > top - 14:04:11 up  2:23,  3 users,  load average: 0.04, 0.06, 0.08
>  >  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR CODE DATA %MEM COMMAND
>  > 1461 olpc      20   0 65964  38m  14m    4  23m 16.7 python
>
> and another hour on 759:
>
> top - 15:07:25 up  3:27,  3 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.04, 0.02
>  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR CODE DATA %MEM COMMAND
> 1461 olpc      20   0 70468  42m  14m    4  28m 18.6 python
>
> seems more like 4.5 MB/hour.
>
> (there are a lot of variables in play here -- the main thing is
> that something's certainly leaking.)

The shell shouldn't be doing anything while idle, so checking if the
trigger is activity network would help here.

Thanks,

Tomeu