Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

pano · 2009-02-02 20:46:00

Hi,

I have the following problem:

I am using the current xorg-xserver package from extra, together with the xf86-video-intel drivers from extra (actually everything related to graphics is from extra)
I use KDE 4.2 from extra) with Compositing effects disabled.
After some time, my X consumes up to 240 MB of RAM memory and constantly stays at at least 5 % CPU usage (although *nothing* is running)

Am I the only one suffering from this?

Also If I enable the desktop effects, X constantly uses 10-15% CPU, while being idle

thanks

pano

skottish · 2009-02-02 20:48:41

Is that memory cached/buffered or reserved? Post the output of 'free -m'.

pano · 2009-02-02 22:32:20

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2002 1545 456 0 147 549

-/+ buffers/cache: 848 1153

Swap: 509 13 496

thanks

skottish · 2009-02-02 22:59:07

So you have 848MB reserved, this is the memory that is necessary for applications and processes, and 549MB cached/buffered. That part is useful for performance, but isn't necessary.

That's a lot of RAM in use. What does 'ps aux | grep /usr/bin/X' say?

pano · 2009-02-03 21:25:52

sorry I took so long, but I had to wait until my X' ram usage grew again up to 180 (if I let my pc run longer I'm sure it will reach the 240 MB again, if not an even higher amount)
The funny thing is:
After booting up, my X used about 65MB...

Nevertheless here's the output:
root 4400 11.9 9.5 268820 196816 tty7 Ss+ 17:17 36:24 /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp :0 vt7 -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-KhI9tq
pano 21324 0.0 0.0 9592 1004 pts/1 S+ 22:22 0:00 grep /usr/bin/X

Thank you

skottish · 2009-02-03 21:29:08

Wow, not that I was doubting you before, but I wanted to be sure that it was X. There's no doubt. I'm not seeing numbers even close to that with nVidia, so I'm wondering if it's the intel driver. Is anyone else with the intel driver seeing this happen?

pano · 2009-02-03 21:32:31

I could try to update my driver to the latest version (afaik 2.6.1) from AUR...
Just need to to do the necessary steps to get it working, as it also requires a newer libdrm than in extra

edit:
I just activated the compositing effects of KWin, and now X constantly uses aout 15-20% CPU usage...
The ram usage also jumped up a little

edit2:
"A little" is a little to little (wow what a sentence )
The ram usage just keeps on growing constantly:

root 4400 12.0 13.9 396404 286268 tty7 Rs+ 17:17 38:37 /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp :0 vt7 -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-KhI9tq

after 5 minutes of compositing effects

Last edited by pano (2009-02-03 21:37:41)

.:B:. · 2009-02-03 21:39:01

skottish wrote:

Wow, not that I was doubting you before, but I wanted to be sure that it was X. There's no doubt. I'm not seeing numbers even close to that with nVidia, so I'm wondering if it's the intel driver. Is anyone else with the intel driver seeing this happen?

[stijn@hermes ~]$ ps aux | grep /usr/bin/X
root      4673  5.5  2.6  75168 53900 tty7     Ss+  Feb02  75:22 /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp vt07 -auth /var/run/slim.auth

pano · 2009-02-03 21:40:57

@ B:
Are you also using KDE 4.2?

.:B:. · 2009-02-03 23:01:29

No, Openbox. But I have X eating a lot of memory too, and I'm running the xf86-video-intel driver.

This topic I started a while ago may look familiar to you.

skottish · 2009-02-03 23:05:36

Just for clarity. This is also Openbox, but with the nVidia driver. The system has been up for eight hours. These are totally normal numbers. As one can see, the memory usage is fairly low:

root      3346  0.2  0.5 354260 24088 tty7     Ss+  07:05   1:20 /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp

panosk · 2009-02-03 23:14:26

root      5513 17.9  5.7 231736 207788 tty7    Rs+  Feb03  19:07 /usr/bin/X -br -novtswitch -quiet -nolisten tcp :0 vt7 -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-sguoGu

Running KDE4.2 with intel graphics too.

Odd-rationale · 2009-02-03 23:42:28

I have a similar problem if X ever growing memory usage.

$ ps aux | grep X
root       3772  1.2  4.3  53292 44744 tty7     Rs+  01:38  12:25 /usr/bin/Xorg :0 -audit 0 -auth /var/lib/gdm/:0.Xauth -nolisten tcp vt7
$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1010        786        224          0        101        356
-/+ buffers/cache:        327        683
Swap:         1953          0       1953

I'm using the opensource ati drivers.

My solution, so far, has been to restart X every other day or so...

Edit: X been running for a bit longer now on my machine. As you can see, the memory usage just grows:

root      3772  1.6  9.8 110712 102008 tty7    Rs+  Feb03  35:57 /usr/bin/Xorg :0 -audit 0 -auth /var/lib/gdm/:0.Xauth -nolisten tcp vt7

This is almost turning into a "who's X can use the most RAM" competition...

Last edited by Odd-rationale (2009-02-04 19:51:17)

seenxu · 2009-02-04 10:20:25

I am using a Nvidia card with 180.27 driver, before the *.27 release, After several days of usage without restart X, the X memory usage is always beyond 200mb, since the *.27, the situation seems getting better, it keeps around 100mb or so.

agapito · 2009-02-04 14:10:58

KDE 4 always eats more video memory (Xorg) than gnome. QT4 has double buffering by default, that is the reason. My X process reach easily 300 MB on my KDE 4.2 machine.

Rehto · 2009-02-04 19:28:22

KDE 4.2 with desktop effects enabled and nvidia 8800gt and here's my ps output:

root 4602 6.4 7.5 376116 303624 tty7 Ss+ 19:13 8:31 /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp :0 vt7 -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-AS2SYB

I'm using nvidia's 180.22 drivers

Last edited by Rehto (2009-02-04 19:59:21)

Procyon · 2009-02-04 21:39:52

8 days up, ratpoison, nvida 180.22, 44MB in RAM.

Pitmairen · 2009-02-04 22:30:24

Kde 4.2 with Catalyst 9.1

root      5517  6.9 10.6 423372 359188 tty7    Rs+  Feb01 309:57 /usr/bin/X -br -novtswitch -quiet -nolisten tcp :0 vt7 -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-l4gqRL

--------------

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          3295       3200         94          0         53       1924
-/+ buffers/cache:       1222       2072
Swap:         1906        170       1736

Mr.Elendig · 2009-02-04 22:36:13

You can use xrestop to see what's really eating the ram. Firefox is a usual suspect if you are using it.

skottish · 2009-02-04 22:40:47

Mr.Elendig wrote:

You can use xrestop to see what's really eating the ram. Firefox is a usual suspect if you are using it.

With Openbox, nVidia, and Firefox open, I don't see numbers anywhere near what people are seeing. I'm looking at 245MB total reserved RAM right now.

Mr.Elendig · 2009-02-04 22:47:53

xrestop often shows lower memory usage than top/htop shows, but it is a good indicator to what is eating the most amount. Eg if Firefox or some other app is on top with 100x more ram usage than the rest in the list, then it's a good indication that it is the guilty app

Edit: Example:

# top  
4443 root      20   0  460m  87m  10m S    0  2.2   2:08.15 X
4477 oh        20   0  678m 237m  26m S    0  6.0  19:32.35 firefox

# xrestop
0c00000   494  257    1  163  324     3755K     26K   3781K  4477 Firefox
0a00000     2    2   10    1   35      144B     10K     11K  4459 rxvt-256color - (4) [oh@Alice]% [~] (screen)
1200000     2    2    6    0    9        0B      6K      6K  4593 rxvt-256color - (4) [oh@Alice]% [~] (xrestop)
0400000     0    1    0    0  225        0B      5K      5K   ?   <unknown>
0000000     1    0    2    0   59       32B      3K      3K   ?   <unknown>
0800000     1    1    1    0    2        0B      1K      1K   ?   <unknown>
0600000     0    1    0    0   30        0B    744B    744B   ?   <unknown>
1400000     1    1    0    0    0        0B     48B     48B   ?   xrestop
0e00000     1    1    0    0    0        0B     48B     48B   ?   <unknown>
1000000     0    1    0    0    0        0B     24B     24B   ?   <unknown>
0200000     0    1    0    0    0        0B     24B     24B   ?   <unknown>

Last edited by Mr.Elendig (2009-02-04 22:50:45)

pano · 2009-02-06 23:32:01

the last couple of days, my X stayed around 120 MB ram...
weird...

also xrestop says that the application with the most ram usage is Qt-subaplication...
weirder...

pano

Ronin-Sage · 2009-02-06 23:46:55

Are you using Firefox extensively? AFAIK, all Gecko engine browsers have this issue where the pixmem cache isn't properly handled(or at least leads to misleading memory reports).

pano · 2009-02-06 23:49:11

I don't use firefox at all. I don't even have it installed

pano · 2009-02-11 22:19:09

Do you want to hear a really weird thing?
I installed Mandriva 2009.0 with KDE 4.2 on my brothers notebook (intel x3100 integrated graphics chip, 512MB RAM) and the funny thing is:

Although he has less RAM than my notebook and a weaker CPU (I have a pentium dual core, and he has a single core Celeron) his X server *never* uses more than 100 MB. He also has the compositing effects enabled, that also run *much* faster/smoother than they do on my arch linux.
All in all his KDE runs much smoother.

I really don't understand why...

Last edited by pano (2009-02-11 22:20:08)

Arch Linux

#1 2009-02-02 20:46:00

Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#2 2009-02-02 20:48:41

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#3 2009-02-02 22:32:20

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#4 2009-02-02 22:59:07

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#5 2009-02-03 21:25:52

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#6 2009-02-03 21:29:08

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#7 2009-02-03 21:32:31

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#8 2009-02-03 21:39:01

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#9 2009-02-03 21:40:57

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#10 2009-02-03 23:01:29

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#11 2009-02-03 23:05:36

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#12 2009-02-03 23:14:26

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#13 2009-02-03 23:42:28

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#14 2009-02-04 10:20:25

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#15 2009-02-04 14:10:58

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#16 2009-02-04 19:28:22

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#17 2009-02-04 21:39:52

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#18 2009-02-04 22:30:24

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#19 2009-02-04 22:36:13

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#20 2009-02-04 22:40:47

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#21 2009-02-04 22:47:53

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#22 2009-02-06 23:32:01

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#23 2009-02-06 23:46:55

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#24 2009-02-06 23:49:11

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

#25 2009-02-11 22:19:09

Re: Xserver uses up to 250 MB memory

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