From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail143.messagelabs.com (mail143.messagelabs.com [216.82.254.35]) by kanga.kvack.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 69E506B007B for ; Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:27:12 -0400 (EDT) Received: from d01relay03.pok.ibm.com (d01relay03.pok.ibm.com [9.56.227.235]) by e5.ny.us.ibm.com (8.14.4/8.13.1) with ESMTP id o8FJ7OBf002460 for ; Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:07:24 -0400 Received: from d01av04.pok.ibm.com (d01av04.pok.ibm.com [9.56.224.64]) by d01relay03.pok.ibm.com (8.13.8/8.13.8/NCO v10.0) with ESMTP id o8FJR5NL331132 for ; Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:27:05 -0400 Received: from d01av04.pok.ibm.com (loopback [127.0.0.1]) by d01av04.pok.ibm.com (8.14.4/8.13.1/NCO v10.0 AVout) with ESMTP id o8FJR49I011867 for ; Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:27:05 -0400 Subject: Re: [RFC][PATCH] update /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches documentation From: Dave Hansen In-Reply-To: References: <20100914234714.8AF506EA@kernel.beaverton.ibm.com> <20100915133303.0b232671.kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> <20100915135016.C9F1.A69D9226@jp.fujitsu.com> <1284531262.27089.15725.camel@nimitz> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ANSI_X3.4-1968" Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 12:27:01 -0700 Message-ID: <1284578821.27089.17409.camel@nimitz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org To: "Eric W. Biederman" Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro , KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org, lnxninja@linux.vnet.ibm.com List-ID: On Wed, 2010-09-15 at 11:37 -0700, Eric W. Biederman wrote: > > I'm worried that there are users out there experiencing real problems > > that aren't reporting it because "workarounds" like this just paper over > > the issue. > > For what it is worth. I had a friend ask me about a system that had 50% > of it's memory consumed by slab caches. 20GB out of 40GB. The kernel > was suse? 2.6.27 so it's old, but if you are curious. > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches does nothing in that case. Was it the reclaimable caches doing it, though? The other really common cause is kmalloc() leaks. -- Dave -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org