memory leak in free()

Paul Allen nospam at ugcs.caltech.edu
Wed Jun 14 17:53:54 UTC 2006


>From Jason Evans <jasone at freebsd.org>, Wed, Jun 14, 2006 at 10:35:03AM -0700:
> This is on a 32-bit system, right?  If so, what's happening is that the 
> brk-managed space (data segment) is being fragmented, such that the 
> address space isn't returned to the OS.  However, this is not really a 
> memory leak, since madvise() is called in order to let the kernel know 
> that the unused space need not be swapped out.

And in particular this should manifest itself as 'RES' declining but 'SIZE'
in top remaining unchanged.  Until an over-commit hating individual manages
to get a patch into the tree, this should not be a concern at all.

                             Paul


More information about the freebsd-current mailing list