From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Feb 3 12:58:17 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1998116A421 for ; Sun, 3 Feb 2008 12:58:17 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from des@des.no) Received: from tim.des.no (tim.des.no [194.63.250.121]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D69BF13C455 for ; Sun, 3 Feb 2008 12:58:16 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from des@des.no) Received: from tim.des.no (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by spam.des.no (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2B4A92084 for ; Sun, 3 Feb 2008 13:58:08 +0100 (CET) X-Spam-Tests: AWL X-Spam-Learn: disabled X-Spam-Score: -0.2/3.0 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.3 (2007-08-08) on tim.des.no Received: from ds4.des.no (des.no [80.203.243.180]) by smtp.des.no (Postfix) with ESMTP id AA7C62083 for ; Sun, 3 Feb 2008 13:58:07 +0100 (CET) Received: by ds4.des.no (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 98484844B3; Sun, 3 Feb 2008 13:58:07 +0100 (CET) From: =?utf-8?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=C3=B8rgrav?= To: hackers@freebsd.org Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 13:58:07 +0100 Message-ID: <8663x6mc2o.fsf@ds4.des.no> User-Agent: Gnus/5.110006 (No Gnus v0.6) Emacs/22.1 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Cc: Subject: sort(1) memory usage X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 12:58:17 -0000 I've been trying to figure out why some periodic scripts consume so much memory. I've narrowed it down to sort(1). At first, I thought the scripts were using it inefficiently, feeding it more data than was really needed. Then I discovered this: des@ds4 ~% (sleep 10 | sort) & (sleep 5 ; top -o res | grep sort) [1] 66024 66024 des 1 -8 5 54796K 52680K piperd 1 0:00 0.88% sort That's right - sort(1) consumes 50+ MB of memory doing *nothing*. (roughly half that on a 32-bit box) Something is rotten in the state of GNU... DES --=20 Dag-Erling Sm=C3=B8rgrav - des@des.no