[erlang-questions] Examining Erlang crash dumps - how to account for all memory?

Jack Moffitt jack@REDACTED
Fri Jul 8 17:48:53 CEST 2011


> I've already tried the Crashdump Viewer and either I'm missing something or
> there isn't much help there for my kind of problem.
>
> The number I get is 525 MB whereas the processes_used value is at 1348 MB.
> Where can I find the rest of the memory?

Usually when my VMs run out of memory it turns out to be a really
large process mailbox. Try looking at the message queue lengths
instead of just the heap.

Also note that Erlang's GC is generational, so when it runs out, it
must allocate a new block larger than the old block. So if it's got a
block at 500MB and tries to allocate 600MB for the new generation,
well, that's getting close to the number you posted.

jack.



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