Memory leak in Service Task

Sergio Gaytan · ‎01-11-2010

Hi Experts

I had a Memory Leak problem in three "cisco WS-C6504-E" with "s72033-advipservicesk9_wan-vz.122-33.SXH4.bin image", the TAC found a Bug in this version (CSCsy78994) that was affected all services because a task (Service Task with id:4) of ios-base process increasingly consumes available free memory without relinquishing it any time.

They recommended me an IOS Upgrade, I had to upgrade them to "s72033-advipservicesk9_wan-vz.122-33.SXH6.bin" where the bug is fixed and the problem was resolved except in one of them (the leak continues).

I was entering the "show processes memory detailed" and "show processes memory detailed 24599 taskid 4" commands at 4 regular intervals of 30 minutes and the same process is continually consuming more memory.

I attached the information that I captured and "show memory".

Does anyone know how can I troubleshoot it? or this could be a failure in the hardware, Supervisor?

Giuseppe Larosa · ‎01-12-2010

Hello Sergio,

this kind of problem affects only modular IOS I would install a standard IOS image instead

Are you using features only present in modular IOS?

Hope to help

Giuseppe

Sergio Gaytan · ‎01-12-2010

Hi Giuslar

I need to use modular IOS.

I do not know why the upgrade is only affecting one of three devices that I upgraded.

Do you know how can I troubleshoot it?

My Customer does not want to change to standard IOS because the Bug is not present in other devices with the same image (12.2(33)SXH6).

Giuseppe Larosa · ‎01-12-2010

Hello Sergio,

I think you have already performed a troubleshooting analysis that shows memory usage increase over time for this process

From your attached files:

h 17.00

#sh processes memory detail
System Memory : 1048576K total, 376229K used, 672347K free, 1000K kernel reserved

#sh processes memory detaile 24599 taskid 4
System Memory : 1048576K total, 376229K used, 672347K free, 1000K kernel reserved
Lowest(b) : 688353280
Process sbin/ios-base, type IOS, PID = 24599
174316K total, 81872K text, 4K data, 88K stack, 92352K dynamic

Memory Summary for TaskID = 4
Holding = 18106904

h 17.30

#sh processes memory detailed 24599 taskid 4
System Memory : 1048576K total, 376297K used, 672279K free, 1000K kernel reserved
Lowest(b) : 688353280
Process sbin/ios-base, type IOS, PID = 24599
174316K total, 81872K text, 4K data, 88K stack, 92352K dynamic

Memory Summary for TaskID = 4
Holding = 18305880

if your Cisco TAC Service request is still open you can ask them to perform other analysis.

They can do a low level troubleshooting and they can contact IOS developers.

As I've written at the beginning of the post you have already done what a non cisco network engineer can do for this.

If the service request is already closed open a new one and refers to the old SR.

Inform your customer that one box is probably going to crash over time for lack of memory. But you have done this already as you wrote

Hope to help

Giuseppe