Chris Phillips cphillips83

Debugging a RequestContext Memory Leak with AI Assistance

TL;DR

A senior developer and Claude AI collaborated to diagnose and fix a memory leak in an ASP.NET application where RequestContext objects were being created but not torn down. The fix took ~2 hours of iterative debugging, not "ask AI and done." This document shows how AI assistance requires domain expertise to be effective.

The Problem

ActiveContextCount kept climbing from 1 to 139+ without returning to baseline. Requests were being set up but not torn down, causing a memory/connection leak.

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I am cphillips83 on github.
I am cphillips83 (https://keybase.io/cphillips83) on keybase.
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To claim this, I am signing this object:

https://www.blackmoreops.com/2014/09/25/find-number-of-unique-ips-active-connections-to-web-server/

On Tue Oct 27, 2015, history.state.gov began buckling under load, intermittently issuing 500 errors. Nginx's error log was sprinkled with the following errors:

2015/10/27 21:48:36 [crit] 2475#0: accept4() failed (24: Too many open files) 2015/10/27 21:48:36 [alert] 2475#0: *7163915 socket() failed (24: Too many open files) while connecting to upstream...

An article at http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-unix-nginx-too-many-open-files/ provided directions that mostly worked. Below are the steps we followed. The steps that diverged from the article's directions are marked with an *.

- Instead of using su to run ulimit on the nginx account, use ps aux | grep nginx to locate nginx's process IDs. Then query each process's file handle limits using cat /proc/pid/limits (where pid is the process id retrieved from ps). (Note: sudo may be necessary on your system for the cat command here, depend

Guide to setting up docker https://blog.sixeyed.com/getting-started-with-docker-on-windows-server-2019/

VSCode https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/?dv=win64

Git tools for windows https://git-scm.com/downloads

Install windows 3.5 features

	-- Fix: add missing index on orders.status for active order queries
	-- Author: DBA Team
	-- Date: 2026-03-16

	BEGIN;

	CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY idx_orders_status
	ON orders(status)
	WHERE status != 'completed';

	function k { kubectl @args }
	function kl { kubectl logs @args }
	function kg { kubectl get @args }
	function kd { kubectl describe @args }
	function ke { kubectl exec -it @args -- sh }
	function kaf { kubectl apply -f @args }
	function kdf { kubectl delete -f @args }

	DECLARE @CurrentDataType VARCHAR(max)
	DECLARE @DataTypeToChange VARCHAR(max)
	DECLARE @SQLQUERY nvarchar(max)

	SET @CurrentDataType = 'text' ---CHANGE HERE !!
	SET @DataTypeToChange = 'nvarchar(max)' ---CHANGE HERE !!

	DECLARE MY_CURSOR CURSOR
	LOCAL STATIC READ_ONLY FORWARD_ONLY
	FOR

	//https://github.com/marcel-dempers/docker-development-youtube-series
	using System;
	using System.Threading;
	using System.Threading.Tasks;
	using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;
	using Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting;

	namespace dockergraveful
	{
	class Program

	/* To prevent any potential data loss issues, you should review this script in detail before running it outside the context of the database designer.*/
	BEGIN TRANSACTION
	SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
	SET ARITHABORT ON
	SET NUMERIC_ROUNDABORT OFF
	SET CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL ON
	SET ANSI_NULLS ON
	SET ANSI_PADDING ON
	SET ANSI_WARNINGS ON
	COMMIT


	{
	var q0 = dc.Contacts
	.Where(x => x.ID > 1 && x.Status == EntityStatus.Active)
	.OrderByDescending(x => x.ID)
	.Select(x => new { x.ID, x.Status });

	var c0 = q0.FirstOrDefault();
	Console.WriteLine(c0);
	}