rsync 2.6.0 - suspected memory leak bug

[Wayne Davison]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2004 at 02:45:47PM -0700, Garrett, Kelly wrote:
> After every rsync transfer there is a large amount of memory that is
> not freed up.

Your report sounds like you're not talking about process size, but a
free-memory report from something like "top".  If so, Linux uses unused
memory as disk cache, so the more disk I/O that happens, the less free
memory you'll see on your system.  This isn't a bad thing, though, as
this disk-cache memory will get used for process memory as needed.  Also
keep in mind that once a process terminates, there's no way it can
continue to hold memory (unless there's a bug in the kernel).

If you meant something else, please explain what you're measuring.  In
my tests rsync's memory size stays steady throughout the transfer (once
the file list has been built).  Shared memory between the forked
processes on the receiving side does slowly become unshared, but that
happened in prior rsync versions too (and we've got an internal change
in CVS that should make this better for the next release).

..wayne..