[NBLUG/talk] memory leak question

Sean seanvanco at gmail.com
Sun Mar 16 10:19:37 PDT 2008


I suspect I might be having a memory leak problem, but I don't know
how to check for it properly.

As time goes on, more and more RAM gets used up, until the swappage
gets to bad that the computer is too sluggish to use. I suspect it
even causes my system to freeze up periodically.

According to top, only a small portion (roughly 28%) of my RAM is
used, but according to free about 75% is used. If a memory leak is
taking place, I presume that top won't accurately show how much the
said process is using? Is there a way, say a program I don't know
about, that will help me track this?

I've been suspecting this has been happening for awhile, and a recent
dist-upgrade does not seem to have fixed the problem. It is probably
happening on both my Debian Etch boxes, one 64-bit the other 32-bit. I
do have some non-repository software installed (from tar) on both, so
the upgrade may not have solved the problem. The main software common
to both of them is vmware-server (free).

Is there a way to track the memory leak, if any, or at least find out
who the culprit is?


Thank you for your help.

Sean



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