
homelab VM slowly eating RAM over time
Hello guys, I'm encountering a rather annoying problem
here my setup
- Mini PC i5-12400T running ESXi 8
- Debian VM (12GB RAM, 4VCPU)
- ~25 Docker containers (Plex, Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, Homarr, Grafana/InfluxDB, Nginx Proxy Manager, etc.)
Problem: After each reboot the VM starts at ~3-4GB RAM used. Over 10-15 days it slowly climbs to 10GB+ with 1.5GB swap usage, forcing a reboot.
What I've already done:
- Set
mem_limiton all containers - Replaced Byparr (Firefox headless, memory leak) with Flaresolverr
- Nightly restart cron for leaky containers (Homarr, Duplicati)
Current workaround: Monthly scheduled reboot via cron.
Question: Is there a way to reclaim SUnreclaim Slab without rebooting? Is this a known overlay2/kernel 6.1 issue with many containers? do you have some suggestion ?