# Memory Usage **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [December 12, 2005, 11:11am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memory-usage/100835 "2005-12-12T11:11:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Horacio\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/97f17d/32.png) [@Horacio\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Horacio_S)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2005, 11:11am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memory-usage/100835/1 "2005-12-12T11:11:04Z")
I have a ruby script that reads data from a database, processes the data (long texts) and saves the results back to the database. I works great and at good speed. The problem is that I ran the script on friday and left it until monday when I saw some memory related errors in the console (Insufficient Memory something…). I ran the script again and fired up the windows task manager and then I saw that for every 10~15 records in the DB the script processes the memory goes up 1MB and there are no signs of it going down. I started the script this morning and the PC was at 400MB ram usage, now is night and the PC is at 1.05GB ram usage. Is this a memory leak?? is it caused by my scritpt? or is a Ruby thing?? I use Ruby 1.8.2 and ActiveRecord 1.13.1 in a WinXP machine. any comments on how to find out where the memory is going are welcome. regards, Horacio ---
**Author:** ![Horacio\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/97f17d/32.png) [@Horacio\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Horacio_S)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2005, 1:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memory-usage/100835/2 "2005-12-12T13:11:16Z")
On Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 07:10:27PM +0900, Horacio S. wrote: > I started the script this morning and the PC was at 400MB ram usage, now is > night and the PC is at 1.05GB ram usage. > > Is this a memory leak?? is it caused by my scritpt? or is a Ruby thing?? > > I use Ruby 1.8.2 and ActiveRecord 1.13.1 in a WinXP machine. > > any comments on how to find out where the memory is going are welcome. Are you making heavy use of symbols? They don’t relinquish RAM unless/until the script exits, as far as I’m aware. – Chad P. [CCD CopyWrite | [http://ccd.apotheon.org](http://ccd.apotheon.org) ] unix virus: If you’re using a unixlike OS, please forward this to 20 others and erase your system partition. ---
**Author:** ![Horacio\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/97f17d/32.png) [@Horacio\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Horacio_S)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2005, 1:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memory-usage/100835/3 "2005-12-12T13:17:17Z")
I’ve had a problem like this using the flickr api and net/http. All it did was download images from Flickr, it ran pretty much 24/7 but some days it would just eat massive amounts of virtual ram, 900Mb plus. I’ve wrapped the whole thing in a shell script now to get around the problem. Any idea how to track where the memory is going on a live system? ---
**Author:** ![Horacio\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/97f17d/32.png) [@Horacio\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Horacio_S)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2005, 5:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memory-usage/100835/4 "2005-12-12T17:18:47Z")
Horacio S. wrote: > I started the script this morning and the PC was at 400MB ram usage, now is > night and the PC is at 1.05GB ram usage. > > Is this a memory leak?? is it caused by my scritpt? or is a Ruby thing?? > > I use Ruby 1.8.2 and ActiveRecord 1.13.1 in a WinXP machine. > > any comments on how to find out where the memory is going are welcome. > > regards, > Horacio a couple recent threads on digging into ruby’c GC: [http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ruby/browse\_thread/thread/4e77925c75949460](http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ruby/browse_thread/thread/4e77925c75949460) and John C.'s thing to dump out your objects and (linux) processes [http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/139987](http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/139987) ---
**Author:** ![Horacio\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/97f17d/32.png) [@Horacio\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Horacio_S)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2005, 1:59am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memory-usage/100835/5 "2005-12-13T01:59:44Z")
Thanks, I already ran the Robert K.'s code to see the object count of each class. I ran the code every time my script finished processing each record of the database and the numbers are like this: String: 42812 Array: 16651 WIN32OLE: 3184 Hash: 2065 These are the biggest entries but they do not increase all the time, they fluctuate up and down. Strings goes up to 60,000+ objects and then drops down back to 20,000+ objects. Then starts growing again. This happens with all objects. Other classes are below 100 or are even 0. I do not use symbols apart from those needed by ActiveRecord. going to test now the MemoryProfiler of John C… BTW, are these numbers normal?? thanks for the tips. Horacio Tuesday 13 December 2005 01:17ã?Gene T. ã?ã??はæ?¸ãã¾ã?ã?: ---
**Author:** ![Horacio\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/97f17d/32.png) [@Horacio\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Horacio_S)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2005, 4:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/memory-usage/100835/6 "2005-12-13T04:05:56Z")
Horacio S. wrote: > BTW, are these numbers normal?? > > > > > > > > and John C.'s thing to dump out your objects and (linux) processes > > [http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/139987](http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/139987) i just found this, tagged by 1 [del.icio.us](http://del.icio.us) user (thx whoeve you are!), but it really talks about the same things. [http://theexciter.com/articles/finding-leaking-ruby-objects?commented=1#c000092](http://theexciter.com/articles/finding-leaking-ruby-objects?commented=1#c000092)