Process size versus cache size.

Thomas Schulz schulz at adi.com
Thu Jul 24 14:04:38 UTC 2014


> On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 02:15:34PM -0400, Thomas Schulz wrote:
> > In investigating an out of memory error on a Solaris 8 Sparc
> > machine (compiled as a 32 bit executable), I find that the process
> > size increase due to the cache does not make sense.
> > 
> > Over about a week the process size had grown to 257 MB, up from an
> > initial size of 36 MB. But when I dumped the cache with rndc dumpdb
> > -cache, the resulting named_dump.db file was only 6 MB in size.
> > Given the way the file is formatted, I would expect that the in
> > memory version would be smaller than that.
> > 
> > But when I did a 'rndc flush', the process stopped growing for about
> > the same number of days that it took to reach 257 MB. That indicates
> > that the increase in process size really is due to the cache. The
> > increase in process size from 36 MB to 257 MB does not make sense
> > given that the cache dump is only 6 MB.
> 
> What version of BIND is this?  And do you use statistics-channel?  
> I'd be interested to see what the memory stats look like on a running
> server.
> 
> -- 
> Evan Hunt -- each at isc.org
> Internet Systems Consortium, Inc.
 
I have tried both BIND 9.9.5-P1 and 9.9.6b1. The figures given above
were for 9.9.6b1. I do not have a statistics-channel set up or anything
having to do with logging set up.
I have since rebuilt BIND as a 64 bit executable, so I expect that I will
not have out of memory errors again. But I am seeing the same unexpected
increase in process size.

Tom Schulz
Applied Dynamics Intl.
schulz at adi.com


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