Mystery process crashing machine by using all of the RAM - how to identify?

Posted by wd40 on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by wd40
Published on 2011-06-25T12:10:24Z Indexed on 2011/06/25 16:23 UTC
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linux

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memory-usage

I have a Linux machine which runs ~10 in house written processes.

Every other day(!) the machine completely runs out of RAM, goes into swap and becomes unresponsive. This happens quickly over a period of a couple of seconds, so it's not feasible to sit watching the machine until it dies. It's a sudden leak, not a gradual one, so top(1) doesn't give any indications something bad may about to happen.

What is the best way of identifying which process(es) are causing the trouble?

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