Memory Leak via /proc

Track a memory leak in production using only /proc — no profiler available.

A advanced Linux challenge worth 20 points. Solve it hands-on in a real Linux environment in your browser - no local setup, no fake shells.

The Challenge

A Python worker RSS grows 50 MB per hour. No profiler is installed. You must identify the leak rate and which memory region is growing.

Your tasks:

• Find the worker PID: pgrep -f python-worker
• Record baseline RSS: cat /proc/<PID>/status | grep VmRSS
• Inspect memory map: pmap -x <PID> | tail -3
• Check anonymous vs file-backed: cat /proc/<PID>/smaps_rollup | grep -E "^(Rss|Anonymous)"
• Wait 60 seconds, record values again
• Write to /tmp/leak_report.txt: PID, baseline RSS, current RSS, which smaps category grew
• Run check to validate