[systemd-devel] Excessive (virtual) memory usage of journald

[Holger Freyther]

Good Morning,

I had postponed the adoption of systemd due the excessive CPU usage
of the journald. I am re-evaluating the situation with version 204
right now and I noticed that the (virtual) address space is getting
unusual big.

My journald config configuration is:

  [Journal]
  Storage=volatile
  RuntimeMaxUse=648K


$ cat /proc/`pidof systemd-journald`/status
...
VmPeak:	  131108 kB
VmSize:	   90820 kB
VmLck:	       0 kB
VmPin:	       0 kB
VmHWM:	    9308 kB
VmRSS:	    6632 kB
VmData:	     448 kB
VmStk:	     136 kB
VmExe:	     176 kB
VmLib:	    1972 kB
VmPTE:	     106 kB
VmSwap:	       0 kB
Threads:	1
..

The process size is decreasing (I assume when the journal gets
compacted) so right now I don't think there is a (big) memory
leak. But then again needing 130mb of address space to manage a
buffer of 648kb looks quite excessive to me.

Is this a known inefficiency of systemd? What is the reason for
this behavior?

kind regards
  holger