# Better File\_Column version garbage collecting?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/better-file-column-version-garbage-collecting/103855>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [May 11, 2007, 12:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/better-file-column-version-garbage-collecting/103855 "2007-05-11T00:55:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mrpunkin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@mrpunkin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mrpunkin)\
**Post date:** [May 11, 2007, 12:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/better-file-column-version-garbage-collecting/103855/1 "2007-05-11T00:55:24Z")

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Hello all. I was curious if anyone has patched file-column so that when  
you do multiple versions of a photo it doesn’t need to use so much  
memory. A 7.8 megabyte file on my server is quickly eating 350 megs of  
ram. If you figure you have 5 background tasks processing files at the  
same time you quickly are over a gig of RAM, which is just unacceptable  
to me right now for the scale of our project.

I don’t want to ditch file\_column though because I like the way it works  
and have it pretty deeply rooted. I am just hoping there is a way to  
cleanup the memory between the versions it writes or something so at max  
it uses just over 100 megs. Let me know.

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**Author:** ![mrpunkin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@mrpunkin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mrpunkin)\
**Post date:** [May 11, 2007, 5:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/better-file-column-version-garbage-collecting/103855/2 "2007-05-11T17:17:45Z")

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Bryan C. wrote:

> it uses just over 100 megs. Let me know.  
> Are you using the latest file\_column SVN trunk, which has some calls  
> to run the Ruby garbage collector, or the most recent release (0.3.1)?

–  
We develop, watch us RoR, in numbers too big to ignore.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mrpunkin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@mrpunkin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mrpunkin)\
**Post date:** [May 11, 2007, 6:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/better-file-column-version-garbage-collecting/103855/3 "2007-05-11T18:36:50Z")

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Mark Reginald J. wrote:

> Bryan C. wrote:
> 
> > it uses just over 100 megs. Let me know.  
> > Are you using the latest file\_column SVN trunk, which has some calls  
> > to run the Ruby garbage collector, or the most recent release (0.3.1)?
> 
> –  
> We develop, watch us RoR, in numbers too big to ignore.

you may want to take a look at upload\_column