Linux Memory Leaks: Deep Dive & Practical Detection

Описание: In this 16-minute deep dive, we move beyond basic commands to understand, reproduce, and analyze memory leaks in Linux at both the kernel and user levels. Whether you are facing steadily growing RSS in production or trying to prevent OOM kills, this terminal-based laboratory will give you the tools to resolve memory-related issues with confidence


The Linux Memory Model: Understanding why "Free Memory" is misleading and how to differentiate between file-backed cache and anonymous memory bloat.



RSS, PSS, & USS: Why VIRT often misleads and how to use smem to see real proportional memory usage.



The Leak Simulation: We write a C-based leaker using mmap to observe real-time Resident Set Size (RSS) growth and anonymous page rising.



Production Hunting: Detecting subtle leaks over time using pidstat, pmap, and /proc/vmstat.



Advanced Profiling: Using Valgrind and eBPF to detect malloc/free imbalances in staging environments.



Docker & Containers: Analyzing leak behavior under cgroup memory limits and identifying OOM kill triggers.


[Timestamps]
0:00 - Introduction & Objectives
0:45 - The Linux Memory Model (Expert Level)
2:15 - Inspecting Mappings: /proc/self/maps & smaps
4:00 - Real Memory: Understanding RSS, PSS, and USS
5:30 - Tool Spotlight: smem for Process Analysis
7:00 - Heap Growth: brk vs mmap
8:45 - Monitoring Anon vs File-backed Memory
10:30 - Creating a Live Leak (C-Simulation)
12:15 - Observing the Leak & Performance Degradation
13:45 - Recovery: Safe Termination & Memory Verification
14:30 - Leak Hunting in Production & Docker 15:15 - Profiling with Valgrind & eBPF


Prevention & Summary

[Commands Used]


cat /proc/self/smaps


smem -rkp


pmap -x "PID"


watch -n1 "grep -E 'Anon|file' /proc/meminfo"


valgrind --leak-check=full

#Linux #DevOps #SystemEngineering #CyberSecurity #BashBond #LinuxKernel