High RCLONE RAM usage. Use server for Plex on GSuite. Any thoughts?

[ml3000 (Matt)]

Hi Everyone,

Just wondering if anyone could help me shed some light as to why RCLONE is using close to 7GB of RAM on my plex server. I noticed today that im starting to run out of RAM on my server and I am worried that I may start running into issues soon. Any insight?

[Unit]
Description=RClone Service
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/rclone mount plexcache: /home/plex/gdrive/plexcache \
--allow-other \
--buffer-size 1G \
--dir-cache-time 96h \
--log-level INFO \
--log-file /home/plex/gdrive/utilities/logs/rclone.log \
--timeout 1h \
--umask 002 \
--user-agent spacegeese \
--rc
ExecStop=/bin/fusermount -uz /home/plex/gdrive/plexcache
Restart=on-failure
User=plex
Group=plex

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

[Animosity022]

--buffer-size 1G \

Each file opened use 1G of memory.

[ml3000 (Matt)]

Hot Damn... well I could see that breaking stuff. What would be the recommended size for decent playback?

[Animosity022]

Not sure there is a quick answer, but default is a great start. It depends on your memory on the system and how much extra you got.

What's the overall memory on the system?

[ml3000 (Matt)]

I have 12GB of RAM total on the server. I am getting a little bit of mixed results as to how much my box is using but I feel like I am on the brink of issues.. Possible overreaction...

I am not quite sure which one is accurate.

[Animosity022]

Linux tends to use all the available memory for file caching/buffering so seeing a big numebr isn't a bad thing.

So in my case, there is 15GB of memory used for file caching and if needed, it will use that for applications.

[thestigma]

Default is 16MB, and that's likely enough in most cases to be honest, but if you have a lot of memory like you do then I'd probably give it 32 or 64MB for good measure.

To the best of my understanding this buffer is mostly there to smooth out any minor hiccups in the transfer that would lower the efficiency of bandwidth utilization. For example if reading/writing from/to a mechanical HDD that is under heavy load as thus isn't so quick to react to requests. You wouldn't want the whole transfer to wait just because the HDD wasn't ready - so that's where the buffer picks up the slack and either takes in or supplies data during those short hiccups. It's not meant to be a media playback buffer. Your media player does that on it's own.

In any case 1GB is massive overkill and I struggle to see how that would useful, much less needed by anyone.