2008-11-18 02:05:30 Memory Freeup issue

Sada M (INDIA)

Message: 65402

Hi,

This is Sada from Jasmin Infotech. We are working on BF533 Blackfin uCLinux environment for a networked music player product for a customer.

We are seeing a strange behavior in the total system free memory available.

Background:

The high-level functionality of the device include downloading data from internet radio servers or a local DLNA server and then playback of the same by a audio decoder running in Blackfin with the CODEC output. The system has the associated network stacks, Audio decoders and drivers running.

The Kernel used is 2007R1.

Issue :

The device connects to a internet Radio server and downloads songs in MP3/WMA format. The downloaded Data is fed to the decoder and decoded resulting in audio output.

We have a test system in which we just download the data alone without the decoding.

We download one song after another. The system is kept running for a long time (1 hour).

There are lot of memory allocation and free happening in the system.

We are seeing that the free memory available in the system is reduced after one hour of playback under this continuous download of one song after another.

If we do the same experiment with a delay of 2 seconds inbetween downloading two Consecutive songs we see the free memory is more or less unchanged.

Could you provide your expert advice on the above.

We do not find any memory leaks in our system though we are verifying that once more. We see that the reduction in free memory could affect the system behaviour and hence We request on how to handle this.

Regards,

Sada

QuoteReplyEditDelete

2008-11-18 02:08:42 Re: Memory Freeup issue

Mike Frysinger (UNITED STATES)

Message: 65403

most likely this is the page cache. you can check by forcing a flush of the page cache via /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches.

if you search the forums, you can find info on page cache tuning for 2007R1 ... but this has largely been deprecated/dropped in the latest release as the common code should handle page reclamation much nicer.

QuoteReplyEditDelete

2008-11-18 03:03:04 Re: Memory Freeup issue

Sada M (INDIA)

Message: 65404

Hi Mike Frysinger,

Thanks for your quick reply.

You mean theapplication developer has to handle this or it is handled properly/ nice way in the latest kernals 2008 R1.5.

Could you calrify on this ?

QuoteReplyEditDelete

2008-11-18 03:41:41 Re: Memory Freeup issue

Michael Hennerich (GERMANY)

Message: 65405