I have an issue on our Windows 2003 x64 Build Server when invoking shell commands from a script. Each call causes a "memory leak" in the page file so it grows quite rapidly until it reaches the maximum and the machine stops working.
I can reproduce the problem very nicely by running a Perl script like
for ($count=1; $count<5000; $count++) { system "echo huhu"; }
It is independent of the scripting language as the same happens with Lua:
for i=1,5000 do os.execute("echo huhu") end
It's also an issue when using PHP. (Their solution (uninstalling a secondary firewall) doesn't apply since neither a firewall or virus Scanner are running on the machine.)
We can also reproduce the issue on other developer machines running Windows XP 64, but not on XP 32 Bit.
The guilty guy for the allocation is C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe -k netsvcs
which runs all the basic Windows services.
Does anybody know the issue and how to resolve it?