# Huge mem leak coming from somewhere, can't kill process



## caesius (Apr 25, 2009)

Hi all, move this to ports forum if it is indeed to do with them, but i'm not sure.

I haven't worked out which application it is, but after running something the whole system slows to a halt and I see from top;


```
blackbox# top
last pid:  2777;  load averages:  0.12,  0.17,  0.12                                                                  up 0+02:59:44  12:35:07
94 processes:  1 running, 93 sleeping
CPU:  3.0% user,  0.0% nice,  0.0% system,  1.1% interrupt, 95.9% idle
Mem: 1093M Active, 291M Inact, 156M Wired, 57M Cache, 112M Buf, 392M Free
Swap: 8192M Total, 1824M Used, 6368M Free, 22% Inuse

  PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE  C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
 1654 ben           3  44    0 59632K 26056K ucond  1   0:40  0.10% ktorrent
 1157 root          1  45    0   151M   104M select 0  27:19  0.00% Xorg
 1740 ben           1  44    0  [B]2668M[/B]   320K select 1  18:41  0.00% ld-2.3.6.so
 1475 ben           1  20    0   [B]149M[/B]     0K pause  1   0:40  0.00% <ld-2.3.6.so>
 1519 ben           1  44    0   [B]174M[/B]   376K select 1   0:31  0.00% ld-2.3.6.so
 1332 ben           1  44    0 31192K  8184K select 1   0:28  0.00% kdeinit
 1308 ben           1  44    0 31776K  9824K select 0   0:03  0.00% kdeinit
 1162 haldaemon     1  44    0  6780K  1660K select 0   0:03  0.00% hald
 1316 ben           1  44    0 30180K  9440K select 1   0:03  0.00% kdeinit
  783 root          1  44    0  3268K   136K select 0   0:03  0.00% moused
 1699 ben           1  44    0  3532K  1252K select 0   0:02  0.00% top
```

It seems these processes are to blame, but when I try to kill them *nothing* happens, as in, I can try and kill them within top or with the kill command, but they just do not listen, even when killing them as root.

What is up with these super-human processes? Where are they from and why can't they be killed!?

Thanks, Ben


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## vivek (Apr 25, 2009)

Use ps command to grab top 10 memory eating process:


```
ps auxf | sort -nr -k 4 | head -10
```

You may have to adjust syntax a little bit for bsd system.


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## caesius (Apr 25, 2009)

vivek said:
			
		

> Use ps command to grab top 10 memory eating process:
> 
> 
> ```
> ...



Thanks, but I can already see the memory chewing processes, I want to know where they came from (i.e. what's called ld) and how to kill these indestructible beings.


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## ale (Apr 25, 2009)

Are you running linux programs?


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## caesius (Apr 25, 2009)

ale said:
			
		

> Are you running linux programs?



Yes.

I had a suspicion this could be the problem. The only ones I can think of are linux-flashplugin and acroread (and google earth if it's not native - I can't remember)

Any ideas what could be causing it? It certainly doesn't happen *all* the time.


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## ale (Apr 25, 2009)

Can we see the output of `$ ps axl` ?


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## caesius (Apr 25, 2009)

http://homebrew.net.nz/ps_axl.txt


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## Mel_Flynn (Apr 25, 2009)

Install sysutils/pstree. Then post a pstree -w when this problem occurs, so you can instantly see, which process is responsible.
A dynamic linker allocating 2G mem, seems very suspicious.


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## fronclynne (Apr 25, 2009)

If it makes you feel any better, you're not the only one.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=754944
http://citadel.tistory.com/158
http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/2002-07/msg00155.html
If you thought you couldn't feel any worse, it seems the fix is to stop using acrobat8 or trust adobe to do something.

If you're just using it to view pdfs, may I suggest graphics/xpdf


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