[Mailman-Users] Memory usage climbs for 3rd and 4th outgoingqrunner process

[Mark Sapiro]

Ivan Fetch wrote:
>
>I am curious what would cause an outgoing queue runner process to increase in memory usage, when Mailman is idle?


[...]
>
>Even when Mailman is idle and not processing messages, the memory usage for the fourth outgoing runner process remains at 200Mb and continues to rise.
>
>Last week, after running this way for 3 days, this 4th process was using 800 Mb of memory - at the time, Mailman runners were restarted (although Mailman was idle, and would handle messages quickly). WE may be at that point again tomorrow - I'd like to gather what info I can about this process before it runs away.


I can almost guarantee it won't run away. Eventually it will reach a
point where every list object is cached and a maximum sized message
has been handled, and it will stop growing. Eventually, all 4
OutgoingRunners will reach this size (unless this size is due to
processing an anomalously large message, but that doesn't appear to be
the case here as large messages also affect IncomingRunner).

There are threads on this in the archives. Some relevant ones are at
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2007-December/059332.html>,
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2008-July/062359.html>
and
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2010-March/069075.html>.

In particular, see the post at
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2010-March/069078.html>
which includes a patch to disable list caching in the qrunners if you
want to try that, but I suggest you first just wait, and I predict the
memory growth will slow and eventually stop and it won't impact
performance because at any given time most of the memory is inactive
and will be swapped out if needed for other processes.

Also, you can add up all the sizes of the lists/*/config.pck files to
get a very rough idea of how much things may grow.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan