Memory leak or something else?..

[Guest]

Hello,
I work for a retail company that has an application that is based on java. The machines that the program is installed on are very low end: 1 GHZ processor, 256 MB ram. After 2 -3 days of the program running, it (the program) begins to become unresponsive. From what I’ve read this is a memory leak. Am I correct? Will adding memory stop or atleast delay this problem?

So will increasing the memory from 256 MB to 1 Gig have an effect on how long before this sets in? Will it push it from 2 – 3 days to 6 – 7 days or more? Is there a way to tell how long it will take before it becomes unresponsive? Thank you for any assistance you may provide.

 

[bliq]

Hello,
I work for a retail company that has an application that is based on java. The machines that the program is installed on are very low end: 1 GHZ processor, 256 MB ram. After 2 -3 days of the program running, it (the program) begins to become unresponsive. From what I’ve read this is a memory leak. Am I correct? Will adding memory stop or atleast delay this problem?

So will increasing the memory from 256 MB to 1 Gig have an effect on how long before this sets in? Will it push it from 2 – 3 days to 6 – 7 days or more? Is there a way to tell how long it will take before it becomes unresponsive? Thank you for any assistance you may provide.

You're asking a question that's tough to answer without more details. Any number of reasons can cause a machine to become unresponsive over time. If it's windows, run taskmgr.exe and see which resource you are running out of. If it's linux, run top for the same reason.

It's possible that you've run out of virtual memory without running out of physical memory. Or you could have your CPU pegged at 100. Or your machine has malicious software taking up cpu or memory.

Adding memory won't hurt, but it may or may not help.

 

[Guest]

Hi bliq,

It always happens around the 2 - 3 day mark, so I can rule out malicious software and an overloaded cpu. There aren't too many programs running, so that can't be it. Up until the second or third day, it's fine, then it's slow to react unless the program is restarted. I'd like to reiterate that it's not the pc, just this one program that gets bogged down over time.

Does any of this shed any light on the subject?

 

[Rock2292]

Run a Memory Test on Your Memory'...See if it pops up any Errors adding memory always helps but like Bliq said it might not fix the actual problem.'..Could be a software it self that might have the problem ..do you have a spare Cpu..u can run that program on for a couple of days and see if it jams up or slows down..? is this program very memory demanding? how much memory is the program sucking up after the three day period..?

 

[leon2006]

Its hard to analyze/assume if its really a memory leak issue or not. If it is memory leak, Adding memory will fix it if your program and OS is designed to run a bigger memory space.

If the "apparent shortage of space" due to memory leak is not that big above 256meg then increasing to 1Gig should eliminate the problem.

Your compute is switching to the SWAP space on the drive once the available memory is insufficient.


Memory leak is common to any computer base environment. I see it in Windows and Unix OS. I have not had a case that the entire memory space is lost due to memory leak issue. So hopefully increasing your memory to 1 gig will eliminate your problem. On the otherside i don't have an idea of your application so there is no 100% assurance that it will eliminate it.

I had applications that runs for 6 months(from start to completion) and observed memory leak issues. But it does not kill the entire job. Additional space due to memory leak don't significantly consume a lot of space.

At 256Meg of Memory you really need to increase your memory. Rams are cheap these days.


Hope this helps...