Wine Hides On-board RAM

Ian D. Stewart idstewart at compuvative.com
Mon Aug 26 22:47:38 CDT 2002


On 2002.08.25 07:38 Andreas Mohr wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 25, 2002 at 08:17:09AM -0400, Ian D. Stewart wrote:
> > On 2002.08.18 12:21 Andreas Mohr wrote:
> > > On Sun, Aug 18, 2002 at 11:32:54AM -0400, Ian D. Stewart wrote:
> > > > 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.
> *sigh*
> You're definitely not of the easy kind of people, are you ? ;-)
> A lot of people would just upgrade and be happy in case the bug is
> fixed,
> but you... :)

Guilty as charged ;)

> 
> Well, if you're so eager to learn what the problem is, then I'd
> suggest
> to get your hands pitch black dirty immediately ;-)
> 
> Find out where /proc/meminfo gets fed with values, then find out which
> part messes with the MemTotal value in any way.
> 
> Hmm, arch/i386/mm/init.c/si_meminfo() sounds like a sure winner.
> I'd suggest looking for the totalram_pages variable (add logging
> whenever
> that one gets modified in some way).
> OTOH I don't see any place where there is a direct assignment of that
> variable. Hmm, where does that variable even get initialized then ???
> (well, probably declaration auto initialization then)
> 
> Oh well, good luck ! ;)

Thanks.  I'll report back once I know more.


Ian



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