This bug has been copied from bug #586923 and has been proposed to be backported to 5.6 z-stream (EUS).
Technical note added. If any revisions are required, please edit the "Technical Notes" field accordingly. All revisions will be proofread by the Engineering Content Services team. New Contents: Due to a memory leak in the ksh executable, the performance of long running scripts could decrease significantly over the time. With this update, the underlying source code has been modified to prevent this memory leak, and the execution of long running scripts is no longer slowed down.
Bugfix was successfully verified on ksh-20100202-1.el5_6.3 package on all architectures (i386, ia64, ppc, s390x, x86-64). Loop time doesn't increase (see bellow) # rpm -q ksh ksh-20100202-1.el5_6.3.i386 ksh version: Version AJM 93t+ 2010-02-02 +-------------- pass number | +- current loop time/1st loop time | | process size --------------------------------------+ | | total time in seconds ----------------+ | | | current loop time + | | | | | | | \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / p# 1: cur/1st= 1.00; loop(secs)= 1.87; total(secs)= 1.87; RSS=0001444 p# 2: cur/1st= 1.00; loop(secs)= 1.86; total(secs)= 3.73; RSS=0001452 p# 3: cur/1st= 1.00; loop(secs)= 1.86; total(secs)= 5.59; RSS=0001452 p# 4: cur/1st= 1.01; loop(secs)= 1.89; total(secs)= 7.48; RSS=0001452 p# 5: cur/1st= 1.01; loop(secs)= 1.89; total(secs)= 9.37; RSS=0001452 p# 6: cur/1st= 1.01; loop(secs)= 1.89; total(secs)= 11.27; RSS=0001452 p# 7: cur/1st= 1.01; loop(secs)= 1.89; total(secs)= 13.16; RSS=0001452 p# 8: cur/1st= 1.01; loop(secs)= 1.89; total(secs)= 15.06; RSS=0001452 p# 9: cur/1st= 1.01; loop(secs)= 1.89; total(secs)= 16.95; RSS=0001452 p# 10: cur/1st= 1.01; loop(secs)= 1.89; total(secs)= 18.84; RSS=0001452
An advisory has been issued which should help the problem described in this bug report. This report is therefore being closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information on therefore solution and/or where to find the updated files, please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report if the solution does not work for you. http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2011-0304.html