From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Oct 10 14:39:10 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher AECDH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 8F336B3D for ; Fri, 10 Oct 2014 14:39:10 +0000 (UTC) Received: from a0i241.smtpcorp.com (a0i241.smtpcorp.com [216.22.15.73]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA (128/128 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 688A6187 for ; Fri, 10 Oct 2014 14:39:10 +0000 (UTC) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=smtpcorp.com; s=a0_1; h=Content-Type:MIME-Version:Message-ID:Date:Subject:To:From; bh=68xBcSr33dKJKZyRmAUwrbwr8eRAqGvU8OCNYfi4SQo=; b=VmNAxNkp0lOL8T6sloFVnTNyVXbV7qzu0Q3hn2mEr7Ym7/jZzp2vgwzNI+iiRvSmJ3/QxRa8zeglCupYlavXpqWrYOz0ebgNmZv2V4hLbHgc46BDPnMqRTvYxnHD0Af2Sm8jCyLzi2GkZDG/5Fbkii6eDqRP8i/p2MvB502kGOE=; From: Daniel Corbe To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Freeing wired memory Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 10:29:20 -0400 Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Smtpcorp-Track: 1bcPCuNRKm8y5Y.NA1TfqK4O X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 14:39:10 -0000 There's an application running on one of my hosts which has a memory leak in it. It ends up consuming a fair chunk of available RAM: Mem: 2312M Active, 69M Inact, 13G Wired, 39M Cache, 1684M Buf, 354M Free My understanding is Wired memory is memory that may not necessarily be in use but it is reserved for applications that either have at one point needed it or may need it in the future. I'll kill the app in another few days or so because calls to malloc() will begin to fail across the board. But my main problem right now is I usually have to reboot the box because killing the app and restarting it does NOT return any memory to the free pool. The step I'd like to avoid here is rebooting the box. So I'm obviously missing something. -Daniel