Raspberry Pi Build Memory Leak?

Questions and Answers : Unix/Linux : Raspberry Pi Build Memory Leak?
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Rob Milius

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Message 1811706 - Posted: 23 Aug 2016, 3:52:47 UTC

I've been using my Raspberry Pi 3 for SETI for awhile and the computer will freeze only after a few hours chugging away at work units. I've tried adjusting the CPU/GPU shared memory, I've lowered the processor usage to 50% and it will still freeze after a few days. Requiring a reboot.

I thought the issue could have been heat so I purchased a fan which keeps it cool to the touch and it still freezes. I'm starting to suspect a memory leak in the boinc manager. Has anybody else successfully left their raspberry pi 3 running 24/7?
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Profile Jord
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Message 1811864 - Posted: 23 Aug 2016, 14:23:49 UTC - in response to Message 1811706.  

I'm starting to suspect a memory leak in the boinc manager.

Because it cannot be trouble with the memory on the device itself?
BOINC Manager is what we call the GUI, it doesn't do any of the calculations, it's just there to easily control the client. The BOINC client itself doesn't do any of the calculations either, it's merely storing the work, scheduling what runs next and doing the communications.

The actual work and memory load is done by the science applications, in your case solely Seti v8. These don't tax the memory that much, what I saw from when I ran it earlier this year, perhaps 50-75MB per task. So if you run on all 4 cores at the same time, it may be that you use 200-300MB total. But if somewhere in the first or second group of RAM there's an error, that can cause freezes.

Best thing to do is run a memory checker over it, most Linux versions have Memtest86 in their start-up menu. And else download it.

Something else you can try to run on it, to see if it is your system or BOINC, is Prime95 (GIMPS). Install and run for during a time line such as you ran Seti, see if that hangs the device. If it does, it's definitely hardware.
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Profile n8xyn

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Message 1816872 - Posted: 13 Sep 2016, 5:14:46 UTC - in response to Message 1811864.  
Last modified: 13 Sep 2016, 5:18:34 UTC

Try adding this line to your "crontab" (sudo crontab -e) add the line

0 */6 * * * sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

this will purge the memory caches every 4 hours, keeps my used memory around 160 megs or so. It has to be done with root permissions or the command wont run.

Also you arnt running the gui? if so dont just boot into a terminal session instead, that saves ram and clock cycles.
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Questions and Answers : Unix/Linux : Raspberry Pi Build Memory Leak?


 
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