Ken,


On Mon, 20 Dec 2010, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 12:44, Ken Schumacher <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Stephen,
>>
>>
>> On Dec 17, 2010, at 7:02 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 14:28, Ken Schumacher <[log in to unmask]> wro=
> te:
>>>> Greetings,
>>>>
>>>> I have a repeatable problem on at least one of our SLF 4.4 system=
> s. =A0It seems that running commands like 'yum --check-update' seem t=
> o run into some sort of memory leak. =A0The yum output gets to the po=
> int of saying "Reading repository metadata in from local files" and a=
> top listing on a another window shows the memory use simply climbing=
> . =A0The original window will not respond to a Ctrl-C.
>>>
>>> 1) various versions of Yum does not respond to Ctrl-C because doin=
> g so
>>> can cause the rpm package database to be left in a bad place.
>>
>> That's inconvenient in my current situation, but I understand the t=
> hinking behind it. =A0I can work around this by having a second windo=
> w open allowing me to 'kill -15' the yum process once it gets into th=
> is bad state.
>>
>>> 2) Yum will use a lot of memory depending on how much is installed=
> . Of
>>> course a lot is subjective and needs to be quantified. [100 mb was=
> a
>>> lot on one system and nothing on another.]
>>
>> I wait about 60 CPU seconds before killing the yum process. =A0Acco=
> rding to 'top', at that point it is using 100% of one CPU and it has =
> already allocated itself 2 GB of memory. =A0On this cluster head node=
> , that is just a bit over 10% of the node's memory, but I am concerne=
> d about letting it go on consuming memory for fear of interfering wit=
> h other services on the node.
>>
>> I have checked the version of the yum and yum.conf RPMs on this nod=
> e and compared to other systems we maintain. =A0We have other systems=
> running those same versions without this memory consumption problem.=
> =A0I have run yum using the '-d 5' flag to get some verbose debug ou=
> tput. =A0The last output before this memory consumption starts says:
>
> Would need to know what is installed on the system
>
>> =A0 Reading repository metadata in from local files
>> =A0 Setting up Package Sacks
>>
>>> 3) 4.4 is really old. 4.8 is standard now and 4.9 will be out of t=
> he
>>> door by summer (it will also probably be the last 4.x series like =
> the
>>> 3.9 was the last of the 3 series.)
>>
>> The node was originally installed with the LTS 4.4 release (Wilson)=
> . =A0Until recently, we have been running daily yum updates against t=
> he node, so all the necessary errata and security updates have been a=
> pplied. =A0Being a cluster head node, we can't jump the node up to a =
> 5.x release without proper planning and scheduling of downtime, etc. =
> =A0Our user base expects the release to remain stable, so such upgrad=
> es are carefully considered.
>
> Well I thought that applying all the updates would bring the system t=
> o
> 4.8 but I realize that Scientific Linux does keep old releases alive.
>
> What does 'rpm -Va --nofiles' tell you?
>
> How do you get the repodata for the systems (local mirror or remote o=
> ne)?
> Can you try updating 1-2 packages directly? or does even yum list giv=
> e
> you a 2GB process?
>
> --=20
> Stephen J Smoogen.
> "The core skill of innovators is error recovery, not failure avoidanc=
> e."
> Randy Nelson, President of Pixar University.
> "Let us be kind, one to another, for most of us are fighting a hard
> battle." -- Ian MacLaren
>

Have you done a

    yum clean all

for each of your repositories?

What version of yum and rpm do you have?

-connie sieh