Re: [Q]

[Carlos Morgado <chbm chbm nu>]

On Sun, Jan 27, 2002 at 09:48:57PM +0100, Pawel Salek wrote:
> On 2002.01.26 12:34 Emmanuel wrote:
> > 	Hi all,
> > I have a big mailbox (>3500 messages) and with top I see that when 
> > this mailbox is opened balsa takes 16M. That's a lot but I checked 
> > the mbox file, it is about 16M also, so I think it's OK. But if I 
> > close the mailbox Balsa does not release the memory. Is it just 
> > because of how the memory is managed by the kernel or glib, or is it 
> > bad practice from us?
> 
> I do not know of any way (apart from playing with brk) to shrink the 
> memory segment extended by libc when calling malloc/calloc. The memory 
> released with free() is available for subsequent malloc calls, though.
> 

true, recent glibcs usually don't give memory back so the program never
shrinks. that's done cause brk() is somewhat heavy.

memprof should reveal the truth though as it traces allocs/frees via 
ptrace

-- 
Carlos Morgado - chbm(at)chbm(dot)nu - http://chbm.nu/ -- gpgkey: 0x1FC57F0A 
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