From: B Kelly <redmine@...>
Date: 2009-02-28T09:33:32+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:22578] [Bug #1223] Memory leak reintroduced in 1.8.6 branch?

Bug #1223: Memory leak reintroduced in 1.8.6 branch?
http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/1223

Author: B Kelly
Status: Open, Priority: Normal
Category: core, Target version: Ruby 1.8.6
ruby -v: ruby 1.8.6 (2009-02-25 patchlevel 355) [x86_64-linux]

In early 2008, there were some 1.8.6 versions prior to p279 which exhibited severe memory leaks. See:

[ruby-core:17613] Re: [Ruby 1.8 - Bug #216] Memory leaks in 1.8.6p230 and p238

I say "prior to p279" because p279 happens to be the version I have been using since then which has had an extremely stable memory profile.

This morning when upgrading a server I also tried upgrading ruby 1.8.6 from p279 to the current p355.

The server has about 200 long running ruby processes, which on p279 can run for months with a stable memory profile.

After switching to p355 I could watch the memory drain away in real-time.  I started with over 1GB free, and finally killed them when it got down to about 65M free.  These are values from the "+/- buffers/cache" line from the `free` command in linux, printed at 5 second intervals, right before I killed the processes:

       used       free
    3959084     104360
    3963336     100108
    3969248      94196
    3974132      89312
    3977016      86428
    3981824      81620
    3983472      79972
    3988388      75056
    3991796      71648
    3994120      69324
    3996916      66528
    3997432      66012

After I swapped the old p279 binaries back in (libruby.so.1.8.6, libruby-static.a), the memory usage is once again stable.

Here are the svn revision numbers for the p279 vs. p355 builds I was using:

  svn revision 19759 - ruby 1.8.6 (2008-07-17 patchlevel 279) [x86_64-linux]

  svn revision 22671 - ruby 1.8.6 (2009-02-25 patchlevel 355) [x86_64-linux]


Regards,


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