TERMSRV.EXE memory leak 1

[Griffyn]

Hi all,

Running Metaframe 1.8 SP1 on NT4 TSE with SP6. Things are generally running smoothly, but I've noticed that the TERMSRV.EXE system process seems to have a memory leak of some kind. After reboot, it will take up about 5MB of RAM, and another 5MB of virtual memory. Over the course of about a month, this process will end up taking 150MB of RAM plus 200MB of virtual memory. I use this one process as my guide to rebooting the server. Seems to work fine.

The obvious question is of course why? Does anyone know what could be causing the bloat?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Daryl

 

[MikeKap]

Daryl, I don't know what is causing the bloat and about the only thing we can do about it is to ask MS to fix it.

Is your method of monitoring the memory leak a manual process? If so, this can be automated using a third-party tool if you are interested. You can detect the leaking app(s), and when the app(s) break the thresholds you've established (in your example 200Mb of virtual memory), issue the reboot automatically.

Mike

 

[Griffyn]

Hi Mike,

We've got about 50 users, so it's not too much trouble for me to keep an eye on the Task Manager during the day. I use this to actively determine if I need to kill off a hung app (the users will never kill it themselves), or if I need to manually kill of a heap of disconnected sessions. I probably need a new server, but then that's another story

I haven't used any automated tools, and to be honest, I don't feel very comfortable giving a piece of software the OK to automatically reboot the server when it feels like it. Obviously you could specify never to do so during business hours - but I run a tonne of automated maintenance stuff every night, plus I occasionally connect in to do manual stuff as well. I wouldn't want the tool - even once - to reboot while things like that were in progress.

Or, are these tools far more intelligent than I realise?

 

[MikeKap]

Daryl, I share your concerns about automatic reboots. The tool I am referring to is as intelligent as the user who configures it is Seriously, if you are uncomfortable with the auto reboot, then you could just have it notify you when the thresholds were exceeded so that you could do the reboot manually. Notifications can occur in any or all of the following ways: e-mail, pager, SNMP, pop-up message. BTW, with regards to memory leaks, in addition to the auto reboot feature you could also tell the software to "run a script" or "kill the process." When you get tired of manually watching perfmon and you are considering alternatives - SysTrack 3.1 from Lakeside Software might be worth a quick look (they have free demos of the product available for download). Also, it does much more than monitor memory leaks so it might be over-kill if that is the only thing you would use it for.

Best of luck!
Mike