[ovs-discuss] ovs-vswitchd memory consumption behavior

Ben Pfaff blp at ovn.org
Sun Feb 17 01:13:52 UTC 2019


OK, cool.

What I usually do for this kind of situation is to start by getting a
core dump of the process at the point where it has clearly exceeded the
reasonable size limit; in your case, I'd say that's at least a gigabyte
or so.  The next step is to run some analysis on the heap in the core
dump to get a histogram of the most common heap block sizes.  Usually,
there's one block size that is much more common than the others and the
obvious source of the leak.  Then you take a look at the actual blocks
in question and use their contents along with the size to figure out the
source of leaked allocation.  Then you fix it (we can help with that
part).

If you're willing to work on this, then I can dig up some scripts I have
for analyzing the heap in a core dump.

On Sat, Feb 16, 2019 at 10:45:03PM +0000, Fernando Casas Schössow wrote:
> That would be me.
> I'm not really a experienced developer but I will do my best and find my way to follow your suggestions.
> 
> On sáb, feb 16, 2019 at 11:37 PM, Ben Pfaff <blp at ovn.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 16, 2019 at 10:00:46PM +0000, Fernando Casas Schössow wrote:
> Indeed OVS is logging memory usage. As you can see after running for around 4 months OVS memory usage grows as high as 15GB.:
> ...
> Let me know if any other log information or command output can help to understand what's going on here.
> It looks like a memory leak to me. Debugging this kind of memory leak usually requires an experienced developer. I can outline suggestions that such a developer could follow. Is there anyone available at your site (you, or someone else)?
> 
> 


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