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I watched as the bitcoind would slowly consume more and more memory, up until it took almost the entire 8G available, at which point it would invariably die off.
What was the magic you used to produce the output, (8G <-- bitcoind is using this much ram.)
Somethings not right there man.
Linux will try to use alot of the computers memory to keep the system fast. 8 gigs of ram
i'm thinking is below average for power linux users. Is adding more of it an option for you.
Maybe i'll bootstrap a build and run the latest bitcoind and the p2pool to see what the story is.