Horrible memory leak in rawhide (kernel leak?)

Wed Sep 3 22:22:10 UTC 2008

Hi,

The last few days I've had a horrible memory leak on Rawhide. The
problem is: I can't find out what's causing it. According to 'top' there
aren't any userspace processes which are using lots of memory, but
according to 'slabtop' there is 'kmalloc-32' which is using excessive
amounts of memory. This looks like something in the kernel to me.
Killing services or the whole X server don't help in getting the memory
released.

The strange thing is I'm having this leak on 2 individual computers with
completely different hardware (one is a desktop, the other is a
notebook).

This leak makes my systems unusable after some time (due to all
userspace processes being put in the swap). The leak itself seems to be
dependent on the user activity. If I leave the computer mostly idle
(just Evolution and X-Chat running in the background) the leak isn't as
bad as when there's lots a activity. If I play a game (using wine) for
example, I need to reboot after a few hours because there's no memory
left for userspace processes (everything is being swapped).

Is there anybody else here who is also encountering this strange leak?
Of does anybody have an idea how to make a proper diagnosis about this
problem?

My desktop is an Pentium 4 2.4Ghz with 1GB ram

$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845 845 [Brookdale] Chipset
Host Bridge (rev 11)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82845 845 [Brookdale] Chipset AGP
Bridge (rev 11)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM
(ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM
(ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM
(ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2
EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 81)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) LPC
Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller
(rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M)
SMBus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G70 [GeForce 7800
GS] (rev a2)
02:03.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video
Capture (rev 02)
02:03.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture
(rev 02)
02:04.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
02:05.0 Mass storage controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3112
[SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)
02:07.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
02:09.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CM8738 (rev
10)

My notebook is an Asus F3SV, which contains an Intel C2D 2.0Ghz with 3GB
RAM. 

$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory
Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI
Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI
Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI
Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI
Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio
Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express
Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express
Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express
Port 3 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express
Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express
Port 5 (rev 03)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express
Port 6 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI
Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI
Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI
Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI
Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface
Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E)
IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E)
SATA IDE Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8600M GS
(rev a1)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Attansic Technology Corp. L1 Gigabit
Ethernet Adapter (rev b0)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG
Network Connection (rev 02)
09:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller
(rev 05)
09:01.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro
Host Adapter (rev 22)
09:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host
Adapter (rev 12)
09:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev
12)

As you can see both the computers contain an nVidia video card. Before
blaming the propetiary nVidia drivers, only my notebook uses those, so
the problem probably isn't in those drivers.

I've tried several different Rawhide kernels (from 2.6.27-0.208.rc1.git2
to the latest of today) but they all have the same problem.

I've managed to save the output of slaptop and the contents
of /proc/slabinfo when the memory usage was horrible again. Maybe
someone can find some useful information in them. They are published at
http://ftd4linux.nl/contrib/slabtop and
http://ftd4linux.nl/contrib/slabinfo

Kind regards,

Erik van Pienbroek