[erlang-questions] Memory management

[Mats Cronqvist]

Ladislav Lenart wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> During testing of our application we found that a larger instance
> consumes about 80% (800MB) of system memory when it is actively doing
> something. When it is only "loaded" but not started (all the processes
> are there but no messages are sent), it consumes about 11% of system
> memory. We have no idea what can make for such a big difference so
> we started to wonder how does the erlang runtime decide to perform
> a GC?

   i would run dtop (http://code.google.com/p/eper), but most people will 
probably be better off with the clone from OTP (etop).
   either will give yoo something like this;

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
shad@REDACTED         size 116(108)M, cpu%   0, procs     57, runq   0  16:12:17
memory[kB]:  proc   92766, atom     328, bin   14359, code    2462, ets     182

pid         name                             current             msgq   mem cpu
<0.29542.0> prfTarg                          (prfPrc:pinf/2)        0    70   0
<0.5.0>     application_controller           (gen_server:loop/6)    0     8   0
<0.29553.0> inet_gethost_native              (inet_gethost_nativ    0     2   0
<0.29601.0> cpu_sup                          (gen_server:loop/6)    0     5   0
<0.29599.0> memsup                           (gen_server:loop/6)    0     2   0
<0.58.0>    (erlang:apply/2)                 (dbg_ieval:meta_loo    0 64472   0
<0.51.0>    (distel:debug_subscriber_init/2) (distel:debug_subsc    0 12839   0
<0.49.0>    dbg_iserver                      (gen_server:loop/6)    0  5342   0
<0.31.0>    (erlang:apply/2)                 (shell:get_command1    0  5270   0
<0.25533.0> (erlang:apply/2)                 (dbg_ieval:meta_loo    0  3320   0