Set memory limits for ath9k

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

We are using the Archer C7 v2 routers (ar71xx) with the ath10k-ct drivers. All of these numbers are while the respective pieces are under load (using iperf).

Currently, the usage on the ath10k-ct drivers we seem to see stay within approx 20-30 MB of RAM usage. The kernel seems to take approx 20MB. Then we have some other things that are taking approx 30 MB.

However, as soon as I connect to the 2GHz (ath9k) channel while monitoring the RAM usage, the routers gets within 4 MB of available memory, and things start crashing until the router reboots.

Can someone explain:

  1. why does the ath9k drivers consume what appears to be 60MB+ or RAM?
  2. is there some way to set the top-end limit of how much it can use?

Thanks!

Spencer

2

It could be a memory leak somewhere.
What LEDE version is this happening on?

It's probably worth to issue a bug report on https://bugs.lede-project.org

3

I do think it is a memory leak of some kind, but the kernel manages it. If we don't run our other packages (that take approx 20MB - 30MB of RAM) it will run stable, but use what seems like excessive amounts of memory.

This is happening on the latest version of LEDE. Well ... it was a build from approx 30 days ago. But I don't think there have been any changes since then.

Any way to tell ath9k to limit the memory usage?