Memory Leak SBS2003 STD

A couple of months ago I had to rebuild a SBS2003 STD server for a customer
from scratch after a server meltdown and no working backup (Yeah Yeah, I
think he has learnt his lesson).
I noticed after a few weeks they were getting lack of memory warnings, after
investigation it seems that a sqlservr.exe process was the cause, digging
deeper the process was furnishing Windows Sharepoint Services, stopping this
service (MSSQL$SHAREPOINT) cures the memory leak. It also obviously stops
the SBS Intranet/Extranet.

Q1. Is there a quik fix available for this ?
Q2. My customer doesn't actually use WSS/Sharepoint, Can I uninstall it
without breaking anything else in the SBS installation.

Thanks Ian M

Susan
Tue Jun 24 23:49:35 PDT 2008

What ram? If more than 2 it's not really a leak, the performance
counter needs to be tweaked.

I would leave it. It's part of the server and as such when patching for
SBS 2003 sp1 SharePoint is a key part.

Ian M wrote:
> A couple of months ago I had to rebuild a SBS2003 STD server for a
> customer from scratch after a server meltdown and no working backup
> (Yeah Yeah, I think he has learnt his lesson).
> I noticed after a few weeks they were getting lack of memory warnings,
> after investigation it seems that a sqlservr.exe process was the cause,
> digging deeper the process was furnishing Windows Sharepoint Services,
> stopping this service (MSSQL$SHAREPOINT) cures the memory leak. It also
> obviously stops the SBS Intranet/Extranet.
>
> Q1. Is there a quik fix available for this ?
> Q2. My customer doesn't actually use WSS/Sharepoint, Can I uninstall it
> without breaking anything else in the SBS installation.
>
> Thanks Ian M
>

Brian
Wed Jun 25 01:10:11 PDT 2008

"Ian M" <mail@igmservices.com> wrote in message
news:uML5C7o1IHA.5300@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>A couple of months ago I had to rebuild a SBS2003 STD server for a customer
>from scratch after a server meltdown and no working backup (Yeah Yeah, I
>think he has learnt his lesson).
> I noticed after a few weeks they were getting lack of memory warnings,
> after investigation it seems that a sqlservr.exe process was the cause,
> digging deeper the process was furnishing Windows Sharepoint Services,
> stopping this service (MSSQL$SHAREPOINT) cures the memory leak. It also
> obviously stops the SBS Intranet/Extranet.
>
> Q1. Is there a quik fix available for this ?

I'm surprised that there is a memory leak here. It may not be a leak -
SQLServer will grab memory up to a pre-defined limit and not let go of it,
but this normally doesn't matter because it gets swapped out if not used. No
idea how you configure this without the SQL Server tools though, sorry.

As a quick (and dirty) fix, put together a command file (.cmd) to stop and
start the service:
net stop mssql$sharepoint
net start mssql$sharepoint
and then use the task scheduler to run this every night in the small hours
of the day.

Depending on the size of your paging file, you might find that simply
increasing that would avoid the warning and that sharepoint (or rather that
database behind it) will reach its eventual limit and settle down.

> Q2. My customer doesn't actually use WSS/Sharepoint, Can I uninstall it
> without breaking anything else in the SBS installation.

I wouldn't uninstall it, but you could stop the service from starting
automatically.
--
Brian Cryer
www.cryer.co.uk/brian

James
Wed Jun 25 01:32:52 PDT 2008

Ian M wrote:
> A couple of months ago I had to rebuild a SBS2003 STD server for a
> customer from scratch after a server meltdown and no working backup
> (Yeah Yeah, I think he has learnt his lesson).
> I noticed after a few weeks they were getting lack of memory warnings,
> after investigation it seems that a sqlservr.exe process was the cause,
> digging deeper the process was furnishing Windows Sharepoint Services,
> stopping this service (MSSQL$SHAREPOINT) cures the memory leak. It also
> obviously stops the SBS Intranet/Extranet.
>
> Q1. Is there a quik fix available for this ?
> Q2. My customer doesn't actually use WSS/Sharepoint, Can I uninstall it
> without breaking anything else in the SBS installation.
>
> Thanks Ian M
>
Have a look at this:

http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/tags/Allocated+Memory/default.aspx

Dave
Wed Jun 25 09:39:17 PDT 2008

Here's the info on correctly setting the performance counter
http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2006/06/07/433707.aspx

You might want to bookmark this site or add it to your feeds - it's great
info about SBS from top-level support at MS.


"Susan Bradley, CPA aka Ebitz - SBS Rocks [MVP]" <sbradcpa@pacbell.net>
wrote in message news:O1Nji%23o1IHA.6096@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> What ram? If more than 2 it's not really a leak, the performance counter
> needs to be tweaked.
>
> I would leave it. It's part of the server and as such when patching for
> SBS 2003 sp1 SharePoint is a key part.
>
> Ian M wrote:
>> A couple of months ago I had to rebuild a SBS2003 STD server for a
>> customer from scratch after a server meltdown and no working backup (Yeah
>> Yeah, I think he has learnt his lesson).
>> I noticed after a few weeks they were getting lack of memory warnings,
>> after investigation it seems that a sqlservr.exe process was the cause,
>> digging deeper the process was furnishing Windows Sharepoint Services,
>> stopping this service (MSSQL$SHAREPOINT) cures the memory leak. It also
>> obviously stops the SBS Intranet/Extranet.
>>
>> Q1. Is there a quik fix available for this ?
>> Q2. My customer doesn't actually use WSS/Sharepoint, Can I uninstall it
>> without breaking anything else in the SBS installation.
>>
>> Thanks Ian M
>>

Ian
Thu Jun 26 08:26:47 PDT 2008

Thanks All.

It's running at 2.25 at the moment but I have seen this up at 4+, 2GB
installed RAM.

I have another SBS2003 server running a similar setup where WSS is being
used, which isnt showing this problem. When I get some free minutes
(business a little rushed at the moment as I run up to a vacation) I will
run some comprisons and see if I can narrow down the specific cause.

Regards IanM

"Ian M" <mail@igmservices.com> wrote in message
news:uML5C7o1IHA.5300@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>A couple of months ago I had to rebuild a SBS2003 STD server for a customer
>from scratch after a server meltdown and no working backup (Yeah Yeah, I
>think he has learnt his lesson).
> I noticed after a few weeks they were getting lack of memory warnings,
> after investigation it seems that a sqlservr.exe process was the cause,
> digging deeper the process was furnishing Windows Sharepoint Services,
> stopping this service (MSSQL$SHAREPOINT) cures the memory leak. It also
> obviously stops the SBS Intranet/Extranet.
>
> Q1. Is there a quik fix available for this ?
> Q2. My customer doesn't actually use WSS/Sharepoint, Can I uninstall it
> without breaking anything else in the SBS installation.
>
> Thanks Ian M
>
>