[chef] Sudden Increase in Merb RAM Use

[Kenneth Stailey < >]

Hi,

merb RAM usage (rss) appears to stay flat for a long time and then suddenly shoots up.

After the RAM usage has spiked it looks like this:

$ ps vax --sort=-rss |head
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME  MAJFL   TRS   DRS   RSS %MEM COMMAND
29513 ?        R    2192:16 1141997   2 2549253 2352616 79.9 merb : worker (port 4000)                                                                  
 9882 ?        S     39:31  31673     2 172461 111188  3.7 ruby /usr/bin/chef-indexer -d -c /etc/chef/indexer.rb
29514 ?        S     20:39  55304     2 132805 58284  1.9 merb : worker (port 4001)                                                                  
29512 ?        S    811:15  11118     2 104457 29028  0.9 merb : spawner (ports 4000)                                                                
10213 ?        S      3:37 119973     2 301561 18080  0.6 /usr/bin/ruby1.8 /usr/bin/stompserver -C /etc/stompserver.conf
15666 ?        Sl     0:15   1473  1617 111930 10768  0.3 /usr/lib/erlang/erts-5.7.2/bin/beam.smp -Bd -K true -- -root /usr/lib/erlang -progname erl -- -home /var/lib/couchdb -noshell -noinput -smp auto -sasl errlog_type error -pa /usr/lib/couchdb/erlang/lib/couch-0.10.0/ebin /usr/lib/couchdb/erlang/lib/mochiweb-r97/ebin /usr/lib/couchdb/erlang/lib/ibrowse-1.5.2/ebin /usr/lib/couchdb/erlang/lib/erlang-oauth/ebin -eval application:load(ibrowse) -eval application:load(oauth) -eval application:load(crypto) -eval application:load(couch) -eval crypto:start() -eval ssl:start() -eval ibrowse:start() -eval couch_server:start([ "/etc/couchdb/default.ini", "/etc/couchdb/local.ini", "/etc/couchdb/default.ini", "/etc/couchdb/local.ini"]), receive done -> done end. -pidfile /var/run/couchdb/couchdb.pid -heart

Bumped up VM that is running Chef server from 3 GB RAM to 5 GB RAM.

After the reboot merb is only using about 185 MiB rss vs. 2.3 GiB

$ ps vax --sort=-rss |head
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME  MAJFL   TRS   DRS   RSS %MEM COMMAND
29513 ?        R    2192:16 1141997   2 2549253 2352616 79.9 merb : worker (port 4000)                                                                  
 9882 ?        S     39:31  31673     2 172461 111188  3.7 ruby /usr/bin/chef-indexer -d -c /etc/chef/indexer.rb
29514 ?        S     20:39  55304     2 132805 58284  1.9 merb : worker (port 4001)                                                                  
29512 ?        S    811:15  11118     2 104457 29028  0.9 merb : spawner (ports 4000)                                                                
10213 ?        S      3:37 119973     2 301561 18080  0.6 /usr/bin/ruby1.8 /usr/bin/stompserver -C /etc/stompserver.conf
15666 ?        Sl     0:15   1473  1617 111930 10768  0.3 /usr/lib/erlang/erts-5.7.2/bin/beam.smp -Bd -K true -- -root /usr/lib/erlang -progname erl -- -home /var/lib/couchdb -noshell -noinput -smp auto -sasl errlog_type error -pa /usr/lib/couchdb/erlang/lib/couch-0.10.0/ebin /usr/lib/couchdb/erlang/lib/mochiweb-r97/ebin /usr/lib/couchdb/erlang/lib/ibrowse-1.5.2/ebin /usr/lib/couchdb/erlang/lib/erlang-oauth/ebin -eval application:load(ibrowse) -eval application:load(oauth) -eval application:load(crypto) -eval application:load(couch) -eval crypto:start() -eval ssl:start() -eval ibrowse:start() -eval couch_server:start([ "/etc/couchdb/default.ini", "/etc/couchdb/local.ini", "/etc/couchdb/default.ini", "/etc/couchdb/local.ini"]), receive done -> done end. -pidfile /var/run/couchdb/couchdb.pid -heart

We are keeping charts of RAM use over time via Nagios/RRD and they show the increase in RAM usage happens suddenly not gradually.  It also repeats over time.

Do other people see this issue?

Thanks,
Ken