Re: Kernel doesn't free Cached Memory

[Vinicius <jdob@ig.com.br>]

Em (15:49:49), Alan Cox escreveu: 


>On Gwe, 2005-07-22 at 08:27 -0300, Vinicius wrote: 
>> Hi all! 
>> 
>> I have a server with 2 Pentium 4 HT processors and 32 GB of RAM, this 
>> server runs lots of applications that consume lots of memory to. When I 
>stop 
>> this applications, the kernel doesn't free memory (the memory still in 
>use) 
> 
>See any FAQ on the Linux memory management - memory is reclaimed when 
>needed not when nobody is using it. That makes things more efficient. 
> 
>> and the server cache lots of memory (~27GB). When I start this 
>applications, 
>> the kernel sends "Out of Memory" messages and kill some random 
>> applications. 
> 
>Some RHEL3 kernels had a problem with very large memory sizes and 2.4. 
>That should not be the case in the current RHEL3 kernels. 2.6 handles 
>very large systems a lot lot better, and of course the fact real 
>computers now have 64bit processors has also rather improved life. 
> 
>Alan 
> 
>---------- 

Thanks Alan, 

   I also read on the Linux-Kernel that the problem may be related to an 
exhaustion of your kernels address space, I read that the hugemem-kernel 
might be the solution to this case since it has 4GB for the kernel memory 
plus 4GB for user process. 
How can I define if my kernel memory is beeing exhausted? Does this 
exhaustion of kernel memory can cause Out Of memory errors ?