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Malloc problems and memory usage

As mentioned in the previous section, memory plays a very important role in squid's performance. It is used for the index of all in-memory objects, and if portions of this data are swapped out it slows squid dramatically. Some operating systems have a problem with the way that they allocate memory, where when a program calls malloc and then calls free it doesn't actually return the memory to the operating system. This means that squid, which calls these very often, will grow larger and larger over time, until it finally reaches the ulimit setting or uses up all the available RAM in the system. The only way around this (since installing a gig of RAM is not the best idea :) is to compile or download a new malloc library for your operating system. You may already have one, in which case you can simply link squid with the new library (run ./configure and then edit contrib/config.site, and add -lmalloc to the line that reads:

${CFLAGS="...."

If you like the layout (I do), I can only thank William Mee and hope he forgives me for stealing it