Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 20:43:27 +0100 From: Ian Dowse <iedowse@maths.tcd.ie> To: Chris Ptacek <cptacek@sitaranetworks.com> Cc: "'freebsd-questions@freebsd.org'" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: devbuf state in top Message-ID: <200210182043.aa79221@salmon.maths.tcd.ie> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 18 Oct 2002 13:11:54 EDT." <31269226357BD211979E00A0C9866DAB02BB99F1@rios.sitaranetworks.com>
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In message <31269226357BD211979E00A0C9866DAB02BB99F1@rios.sitaranetworks.com>, Chris Ptacek writes: >I had a process whose state under top was listed as devbuf. >This process seemed to be stuck and I was unable to kill it. >I ended up rebooting the box to reset it. > >None of the man pages (TOP, PS) list the devbuf state. >What is it and what was the process trying to do? >I am guessing it had something to do with memory allocation. It means that the kernel is trying to allocate memory with a type code of M_DEVBUF, but the kernel limit for that type has been reached. Hence the process is stuck waiting for something to free M_DEVBUF memory for it to use. `vmstat -m' shows the current amount of memory allocated by each malloc type. As the name suggests M_DEVBUF is normally used for buffers in kernel devices. Maybe you have created a very large number of devices or configured a device in a way that requires a lot of memory (e.g set a huge value for SC_HISTORY_SIZE), maybe there is a memory leak, or possibly you just need to increase the value of MAXUSERS in the kernel configuration file. Ian To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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