Meh, I've had too many ati cards die and freak out my systems, which is
what drove me to NV. I haven't had one NV die, but obviously comes with
other issues... Besides I've come to rely on VDPAU for 1080p decoding
on some of my 8x00 NV card systems that I won't give up on (yet) since
ATI chooses not to support it or another reasonable alternative.
-mb
On Thu, 2009-08-06 at 16:14 +0000,
tshipley@deru.com wrote:
> Buy a non-nVidia video card?
>
>
> Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone provided by Alltel
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephen <cryptworks@gmail.com>
>
> Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2009 08:51:32
> To: <michael@butash.net>; Main PLUG discussion list<plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
> Subject: Re: Memory leaks in Ubuntu?
>
>
> i know all nvidia cards have a "turbo Cache" option to swipe some
> system memory for graphics rendering it may be that the driver is
> grabbing this and not releaseing it back.. this may be the killer.
>
> how to resolve. i am not sure.
>
> On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Michael Butash<michael@butash.net> wrote:
> > True enough it is tied to caching, but the fact it's marked as inactive
> > when I can definitely attribute application termination from lack of
> > memory is what I note as a problem. The system does not give this back
> > in the way of virtual or physical memory. The system does however
> > behave well enough as long as physical memory is present to give, but
> > watching a graph of the physical memory is *like* watching a memory
> > leak, whether it properly is or isn't, and end of the road is definitely
> > noticeable with performance on said system.
> >
> > Here's what a normal vmstat looks like currently, notice the caching:
> >
> > procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system--
> > ----cpu----
> > r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy
> > id wa
> > 0 0 4096 224988 69472 5676224 0 0 2 31 12 41 7 6
> > 86 1
> >
> > Here's what vmstat -a looks like currently with "inact" having most:
> >
> > mb@thrawn:~$ vmstat -a
> > procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system--
> > ----cpu----
> > r b swpd free inact active si so bi bo in cs us sy
> > id wa
> > 2 0 4096 223196 5737708 1900724 0 0 2 31 12 41 7
> > 6 86 1
> >
> > Physical memory has nothing with free -m:
> >
> > total used free shared buffers
> > cached
> > Mem: 7888 7673 214 0 68
> > 5543
> > -/+ buffers/cache: 2062 5826
> > Swap: 1023 4 1019
> >
> > When it loses all physical memory, the system slows waay down, java apps
> > get weird (jbidwatcher is the java cancer for me), anything rendering
> > video won't scale, my gl screensaver bogs waaay down. Totem, vlc, or
> > other will simply just crash if run long enough in this state, but I
> > haven't caught the segfault or anything.
> >
> > I've used just about any build within the past 4 years or so of the NV
> > proprietary drivers, and nothing resolves it, though many have said
> > there are issues with 64bit. I can't attribute anything to actually
> > using the memory, and typically where I've seen leaks like this I can
> > always find something even in excess processes running away or ipc
> > threading even.
> >
> > I've lived with it so long it's just just *there*, but I'd kill to fix
> > whatever the heck it is. No amount of research has ever resulted in a
> > fix for me.
> >
> > Thanks for the input!
> >
> > -mb
> >
> >
> > On Wed, 2009-08-05 at 20:19 -0700, Joseph Sinclair wrote:
> >> I have had major problems with the NVidia proprietary drivers, particularly with Ubuntu 9.04. It seems like NVidia introduced a ton of REALLY bad bugs when they had to almost rewrite the drivers for the changes in the new XOrg server.
> >> I haven't seen the memory behavior you describe, but have you checked to be certain this isn't buffers and/or cache memory? I know all of my machines running any desktop distro tend to slowly accumulate cache until me
> >> mory is "full", but none of them have performance issues, since the kernel just reclaims cache LRU when it needs the RAM back. I also see fairly large amounts of "inactive" memory, but I never seem to have problems with the system reclaiming that as needed.
> >>
> >>
> >> Michael Butash wrote:
> >> > Has anyone else seen or experienced persistent memory leaks with ubuntu
> >> > 32bit or 64? I've literally had issues with it that may or may not be
> >> > particularly ubuntu issues back to 7.04 that I first noticed. The only
> >> > thing really in common system-wise is the hardware, and I somewhat
> >> > suspect it's Nvidia driver related, but nothing really indicates any
> >> > particular app. My primary desktop I use heavily just about anything,
> >> > but I have another system that's sole purpose is to play movies and
> >> > music on my TV I do almost nothing with that experiences the same
> >> > issues, NVidia card as well. With compiz or without this happens. Only
> >> > thing I haven't tried is running the NV drivers, but I rely on the
> >> > acceleration far too much on both systems.
> >> >
> >> > What I have noticed is there are no direct applications hogging memory
> >> > via top, rather it seems virtual memory ends up simply taking over all
> >> > physical memory and keeping it as "inactive" via "vmstat -a". Signs of
> >> > this include firefox flipping out, rendering/scaling video larger than
> >> > default, and just anything else that requires excessive memory use
> >> > having issues. I graph my physical memory usage via snmp, and I can
> >> > pretty accurately gauge how long I have until I need to do a hard reboot
> >> > to reclaim the "inactive" memory. It mostly works even memory starved
> >> > in this condition, just limits my usage, and even restarting x doesn't
> >> > help. Interestingly enough, neither system ever swaps at all...
> >> >
> >> > Has anyone successfully ever dealt with an issue like this killing
> >> > virtual memory? I really can't imagine I'm the only one... I've hunted
> >> > far and wide of the great interweb for a way to release the "inactive"
> >> > memory, as I'd even just go so far as to purge it once a day via cron if
> >> > I had to, but I can find nothing of forcefully clearing inactive/dirty
> >> > virtual memory space. I've seen others complain of the same behavior,
> >> > but have only seen the same rhetoric that "trust linux virtual memory
> >> > behavior, that's what it's supposed to do". Act like a stupid windoze
> >> > me install and reboot daily? I think not...
> >> >
> >> > -mb
> >> >
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