Re: Memory management

[Sam Couter <sam couter dropbear id au>]

Anders Selander <selander@pdc.kth.se> wrote:
> However, when I run the code at the target system, a IBM-SP node running
> AIX, with ORBit installed from the source tar-ball, the memory is not
> returned. 

What do you mean by "not returned"? Some systems are incapable of
shrinking the heap once it's been allocated, so the process size won't
shrink back to its original size. That memory is still free and
available for malloc() and friends to allocate from though.

> I guess I have to go back and look over the ORBit installation really,
> really close. *sigh*

Try writing a small test program:

void *mem = malloc(bignum);
sleep(5);   /* Look at the process size (1) */
free(mem);
sleep(5);   /* Check process size again - might not have shrunk */
mem = malloc(bignum);
sleep(5);   /* Check process size again -
             * shouldn't get any bigger than it was at (1) */
free(mem);
-- 
Sam "Eddie" Couter  |  mailto:sam@couter.dropbear.id.au
Debian Developer    |  mailto:eddie@debian.org
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