Wine Hides On-board RAM

[Ian D. Stewart]

On 2002.08.18 12:21 Andreas Mohr wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 18, 2002 at 11:32:54AM -0400, Ian D. Stewart wrote:
> > I have recently noticed an unusual side-effect of running Wine.
> When I
> > first start up my system, /proc/meminfo reports MemTotal as 256892
> kb.
> > After running Wine for awhile, /proc/meminfo reports MemTotal as
> 32680
> > kb.  The system performs as if it only had 32 MB of RAM.  A reboot
> of
> > the system resets total memory to the proper value.
> >
> > My question is:
> >
> > 1) Has anybody else encountered this?
> > 2) Does anyone know what causes this, or better yet how to avoid it?
> > 3) Is there anyway to recover the lost RAM short of a reboot?
> 
> Huh ? This is very, very, VERY strange !
> Something like this should never happen.
> Are you sure it's caused by Wine only, or maybe it is due to faulty
> memory
> instead ? (and thus the board/Linux notices that only 32MB are useable
> and resorts to accessing 32MB only).

Well I can't say with absolute certainty that it's caused by Wine, but 
the system runs without any problems for extended periods of time so 
long as I don't run Wine, and consistently 'loses' memory when I *do* 
run wine.

I don't know exactly what's going on.  I do know that there appears to 
be some sort of threshold that is reached at which point the memory 
hiding occurs (e.g., the same issue arises whether I run Wine for 5 
hours at one shot or for 30 minutes a day for 10 days) and the 
threshold isn't 'reset' until I reboot.

> 
> Again, I'm utterly puzzled when hearing such a story.
> Or maybe Wine accesses some Linux memory management function in some
> way
> that causes Linux to tamper with the value for some reason ?
> This wouldn't be the first time that Wine is the only program to
> reveal
> some severe bug in Linux memory management...
> 
> Definitely try upgrading your kernel, too.

I have no problem with upgrading, but I would like to know *why* I am 
upgrading (i.e., what bug is causing the problem, and how does the new 
kernel address the bug).  To do otherwise strikes me as being 
equivelant to the tendency in the Windows community whenever something 
odd happens.

Thanx for the input, Andreas.


Ian