Let’s say Fedora Workstation 40 Live ISO consumes 2GB of RAM idle. After I upload a 1GB file to the home folder, the ram reaches 3GB. But when I permanently delete the file, the ram is still used as 3GB. This situation progresses up to 5GB of idle ram usage after using Fedora Workstation 40 Live ISO for 1 week because applications will constantly create and delete files. How can I fix this ram usage problem?
Linux Live ISO’s are not appropriate for your use case. They are useful for installation and rescuing broken systems, not as a “daily driver”. You can, however, use a “Live Installer” to install Fedora to an external storage device if you don’t want to install on the system’s internal media. I have two USB-C cases for small SSD’s that were replaced by larger SSD’s. One is used on an old iMac where it is much faster than the internal “laptop” rotating drive, the other for testing stuff that might break the system without putting my main system at risk.
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I am sure there is a memory leak for a simple reason. How can I find documentation on this?
You can try with one of these kernel command line options
- rd.live.overlay.thin=1
- rd.live.overlay.overlayfs=1
See man dracut.cmdline for information about the various overlay file system options, especially the section named “Booting live images”.
I see no reason why these kernel values should not be turned on by default in Fedora 40. Where should I make a request to have these kernel values turned on in Fedora 41?
Which memory? Do you use the free command to see how much memory is used?
Because on a live session the home directory is a disk that resides in ram?
I think that because the live session is meant to be a temporary system useful to evaluate Fedora, to permanently install it and to recover a broken system. By itself it is not born to be a system on a stick[1]
I don’t know if it is the correct term, I mean those distributions that are designed to live on an sub stick ↩︎
“Persistent USB installation” where it is possible to have a read/write space to store changes.
Unfortunately such a installation on a PenDrive is very slow. It would be more useful to use an external SDD and install the Fedora Linux there.
Fedora Live Iso is indeed for test/install purpose only.
I think also that zram (swap space in memory) is causing this changes. You can see if it shows up when you use the lsblk command in terminal.
Mine is a Workstation installation on a SSD
zram0 252:0 0 8G 0 disk [SWAP]
Only if you explicitly mount a ramfs on /home. Otherwise you have some kind of overlay of a read-only file system with a layer on top which records the modifications.