Hello,

Is there some tools / tricks that can be used to help find memory leaks?

I have trouble with an application, that when running for a long time, starts to use a lot of CPU and consume more memory. It starts out by using about 20% CPU (reported by top) and after 24 hours it has increased to 80% usage. Also physical (RES) memory usage goes from 80M to 160M. The workload for the application is the same the whole time.

Using OProfile (http://oprofile.sourceforge.net/news/) shows that that most of the time is being spent doing memory management.

At startup:
CPU: Core 2, speed 2667 MHz (estimated)
Counted CPU_CLK_UNHALTED events (Clock cycles when not halted) with a unit mask of 0x00 (Unhalted core cycles) count 100000
samples  %        image name               symbol name
52764    22.3913  vc_client.native         mark_slice
33580    14.2502  vc_client.native         caml_page_table_lookup
25415    10.7853  vc_client.native         sweep_slice
10119     4.2942  vc_client.native         caml_fl_allocate
6423      2.7257  [vdso] (tgid:9015 range:0x7fff4256c000-0x7fff4256d000) [vdso] (tgid:9015 range:0x7fff4256c000-0x7fff4256d000)
5233      2.2207  vc_client.native         camlLividisvc__Nalbuf_tools__replace_pattern_1033
2759      1.1708  vc_client.native         caml_iterate_global_roots
2728      1.1577  vc_client.native         caml_modify
2473      1.0495  vc_client.native         caml_oldify_one
2204      0.9353  vc_client.native         camlLividisvc__Nalbuf_bytestream__search_1047
2183      0.9264  vc_client.native         caml_darken
1935      0.8212  vc_client.native         caml_stash_backtrace
1843      0.7821  vc_client.native         caml_do_roots
1838      0.7800  vc_client.native         caml_delete_global_root

After ca. 24 hours run:
CPU: Core 2, speed 2667 MHz (estimated)
Counted CPU_CLK_UNHALTED events (Clock cycles when not halted) with a unit mask
of 0x00 (Unhalted core cycles) count 100000
samples  %        image name               symbol name
1137401  56.2697  vc_client.native         mark_slice
405598   20.0658  vc_client.native         sweep_slice
399832   19.7806  vc_client.native         caml_page_table_lookup
10106     0.5000  vc_client.native         caml_fl_allocate
3548      0.1755  vc_client.native         caml_iterate_global_roots
3397      0.1681  [vdso] (tgid:26129 range:0x7fff747ff000-0x7fff74800000) [vdso]
 (tgid:26129 range:0x7fff747ff000-0x7fff74800000)
2797      0.1384  vc_client.native         camlLividisvc__Nalbuf_tools__replace_
pattern_1033
2307      0.1141  vc_client.native         camlLividisvc__Nalbuf_bytestream__sea
rch_1047
2005      0.0992  vc_client.native         caml_oldify_local_roots
1786      0.0884  vc_client.native         caml_gc_stat
1441      0.0713  vc_client.native         caml_oldify_one
1163      0.0575  vc_client.native         caml_darken
1163      0.0575  vc_client.native         caml_fl_merge_block
1032      0.0511  vc_client.native         camlHashtbl__find_1093

The application uses several 3rd party libraries, including: LablGTK2, OCamlNet, LWT and others.

Is there some clever trick that can by used to track down or get a hint of what is causing this?

Thanks,

Hans Ole Rafaelsen