While I'm in this rare mood of delurking, I'd thought I'd also bring to the table the issue from the BigBrother list that has yet to find a solution beyond "Compile a custom kernel" and "downgrade to 8" ... BigBrother servers (BBDISPLAY, BBNET, BBPAGER) running on a Redhat box seem to chew up quite a bit of memory. What's worse, even after all BigBrother processes are killed off, the memory is not released; it seems the only way to get the box back to a working state is to reboot. The first clue for most of us that something's up is BigBrother reporting a high CPU - which isn't so much a high CPU as it is a high load, brought on by the disappearing memory and the increasing swap. At a particular point, the box starts swapping constantly. The box was running perfectly for a month before BigBrother was put on it. This behavior is with Redhat 9, stock updated kernel (2.4.20-20.9). On a 128 MB box, I'm getting a 6 day runtime. The solutions that have been attempted are in line with: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/release-notes/x86/ : ---------------------------- If an application does not work properly with NPTL, it can be run using the old LinuxThreads implementation by setting the following environment variable: LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=<kernel-version> The following versions are available: - 2.4.1 Linuxthreads with floating stacks - 2.2.5 Linuxthreads without floating stacks NPTL support for all dynamically-linked applications can be disabled by using the following boot-time option: nosysinfo ----------------------------- None have provided a significant change in behavior for me. Someone more knowledgable than I suggested that since the memory is not freed when the process is killed, the blame may actually lie with the kernel (which is also indicated by the fact that compiling a custom kernel also seems to make this issue disappear). Any ideas beyond compiling a stock kernel or downgrading? The folks at BigBrother are a bit stubborn since they've had a version of BB since October 2002 that hasn't required patching and is running fine everywhere else - and this is the free version we're talking about. So if they can point the finger elsewhere, they will ... Eric Stewart - Network Admin, USF Tampa Campus Library - eric@xxxxxxxxxxx Managing sysadmins is like leading a neighborhood gang of neurotic pumas on jet-powered hoverbikes with nasty smack habits and opposable thumbs. - Feen, Benjy: Pumas on Hoverbikes: Sysadmin Management, http://www.monkeybagel.com/pumas.html -- Shrike-list mailing list Shrike-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/shrike-list
