2009-02-18 07:56:52 memory issue with BF527

Maha lakshmi (INDIA)

Message: 69554

Hi,

After kernel bootup, meminfo shows

root:/home> cat /proc/meminfo

MemTotal: 61892 kB

MemFree: 48272 kB

Buffers: 12 kB

Cached: 7796 kB

SwapCached: 0 kB

Active: 908 kB

Inactive: 6888 kB

SwapTotal: 0 kB

SwapFree: 0 kB

Dirty: 0 kB

Writeback: 0 kB

AnonPages: 0 kB

Mapped: 0 kB

Slab: 1808 kB

SReclaimable: 1000 kB

SUnreclaim: 808 kB

PageTables: 0 kB

NFS_Unstable: 0 kB

Bounce: 0 kB

CommitLimit: 30944 kB

Committed_AS: 0 kB

VmallocTotal: 0 kB

VmallocUsed: 0 kB

VmallocChunk: 0 kB

My program was able to allocate memory after kenel bootup.

Then copied a file of size 18.1MB to BF527 and deleted it.

root:/home> cp /mnt/swf/nissan.swf .

root:/home> cat /proc/meminfo

MemTotal: 61892 kB

MemFree: 11120 kB

Buffers: 52 kB

Cached: 44852 kB

SwapCached: 0 kB

Active: 908 kB

Inactive: 43944 kB

SwapTotal: 0 kB

SwapFree: 0 kB

Dirty: 0 kB

Writeback: 0 kB

AnonPages: 0 kB

Mapped: 0 kB

Slab: 1864 kB

SReclaimable: 1008 kB

SUnreclaim: 856 kB

PageTables: 0 kB

NFS_Unstable: 0 kB

Bounce: 0 kB

CommitLimit: 30944 kB

Committed_AS: 0 kB

VmallocTotal: 0 kB

VmallocUsed: 0 kB

VmallocChunk: 0 kB

root:/home> rm nissan.swf

root:/home> cat /proc/meminfo

MemTotal: 61892 kB

MemFree: 29612 kB

Buffers: 52 kB

Cached: 26324 kB

SwapCached: 0 kB

Active: 908 kB

Inactive: 25468 kB

SwapTotal: 0 kB

SwapFree: 0 kB

Dirty: 0 kB

Writeback: 0 kB

AnonPages: 0 kB

Mapped: 0 kB

Slab: 1864 kB

SReclaimable: 1008 kB

SUnreclaim: 856 kB

PageTables: 0 kB

NFS_Unstable: 0 kB

Bounce: 0 kB

CommitLimit: 30944 kB

Committed_AS: 0 kB

VmallocTotal: 0 kB

VmallocUsed: 0 kB

VmallocChunk: 0 kB

After this, My application was not able to allocate memory. My program tries to allocate 10 MB of memory then frees the memory.

Please tell me why I was not able to allocate memory again.

Thanks,

Maha

QuoteReplyEditDelete

2009-02-18 08:16:03 Re: memory issue with BF527

Ian Jeffray (UNITED KINGDOM)

Message: 69555

Research the differences between Linux and uCLinux. Specifically MMU vs no MMU. And what happens when you allocate memory.

Whilst you still have sufficient memory, it's not a contiguous block, so if your application is asking for a 10MB contiguous block, it will fail. Try asking for 10 x 1MB blocks and it'll (probably) succeed. This is basically unavoidable. If you really must have a 10MB contiguous block, allocate it early, and/or take it from non-kernel-managed space.

There's probably a FAQ on this, but I, like you, can't be bothered to look for a reference just now.

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2009-02-18 08:32:09 Re: memory issue with BF527

Michael Hennerich (GERMANY)

Message: 69557

Please closely watch Cached and MemFree.

You probably noticed that after coping the 18MB file 2x18MB disappeared from your free mem.

After you deleted the file in your ramfs only 18MB got back to your free mem.

The remaining one is still in your page cache.

Page cache reclaiming on NOMMU Linux doesn't work well.

Try:

root:/> echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

and you will see that all your free mem came back.

What Release version are you using?

-Michael

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2009-02-18 08:50:35 Re: memory issue with BF527

Maha lakshmi (INDIA)

Message: 69560

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

I tried echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches. I saw it's reclaming it's memory but still my application failes to allocate a bulk of 10MB even after that.

Thanks,

Maha

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2009-02-18 11:58:08 Re: memory issue with BF527

Robin Getz (UNITED STATES)

Message: 69576

Michael:

Page cache reclaiming works better after I added this to trunk - try it out, and see if it helps/makes things better.

# the default calculated values for these kernel controls are too small for

# an embedded nommu system, so override them. For more info check out

# - ./Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt

# - ./Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt