xorg has too high vram usage

Bluish9992 · 2023-06-22 15:34:20

hello everyone noob here

according to nvtop /usr/lib/Xorg is taking 3.6gigs of vram, why is that? is there a way to free some of it maybe?
i don't have a lot of vram to begin with, just 4 gigs on this laptop. some of my apps wont even show a gui anymore. is there some reason xorg is taking up so much?

$ nvidia-smi     
Thu Jun 22 23:31:33 2023       
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 535.54.03              Driver Version: 535.54.03    CUDA Version: 12.2     |
|-----------------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                      |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+======================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti     Off | 00000000:01:00.0 Off |                  N/A |
| N/A   63C    P0              N/A / ERR! |   3758MiB /  4096MiB |     11%      Default |
|                                         |                      |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
                                                                                         
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                            |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                            GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                             Usage      |
|=======================================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A       462      G   /usr/lib/Xorg                              3601MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A       782      G   /usr/bin/kitty                                1MiB |

i'm on arch linux on kernel 6.3.8-arch1-1
on an msi gaming laptop
with an Intel i5-8300H
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile
i have it setup to where only the nvidia is used as a gpu by following the steps here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA … phics_only

any insight would be much appreciated

Last edited by Bluish9992 (2023-06-22 15:50:40)

seth · 2023-06-22 18:36:26

Something's leaking pixmaps?
What does "xrestop" report?

Bluish9992 · 2023-06-23 02:25:51

@seth hello there

i did see some outputs from awesomewm about pixmaps being used is 32 when the default is 24, continuing anyway or something like that.

i rebooted and its not that bad anymore but ty for this app, this reports programs under Xserver?

Last edited by Bluish9992 (2023-06-23 02:27:55)

seth · 2023-06-23 05:36:01

There's no default - xrestop reports how much resources clients have allocated on the server (the lion share typically being pixmap data)
Can you quantify "not that bad anymore"?

Bluish9992 · 2023-06-23 07:15:06

thanks for replying

by not that bad i mean it's not taking up all my vram anymore it was using 88% of vram according to nvtop when i created this thread

but now its 497mb which i think is fair considering the apps i have open right now

but i did just get that error from awesomewm again here's what it says specifically:

2023-06-23 15:02:01 W: awesome: xerror:1034: X error: request=(null) (major 139, minor 7), error=(null) (143)
2023-06-23 15:02:01 W: awesome: xerror:1034: X error: request=(null) (major 139, minor 4), error=BadMatch (8)
2023-06-23 15:02:01 W: awesome: xerror:1034: X error: request=(null) (major 139, minor 8), error=(null) (143)
2023-06-23 15:02:01 W: awesome: xerror:1034: X error: request=(null) (major 139, minor 7), error=(null) (143)
[174 15:03:02.820281] Failed to enable transparency. This happens when your desktop environment does not support compositing.
[174 15:03:07.718188] Failed to enable transparency. This happens when your desktop environment does not support compositing.
2023-06-23 15:05:10 W: awesome: root_update_wallpaper:184: Got a pixmap with depth 32, but the default depth is 24, continuing anyway
2023-06-23 15:05:10 W: awesome: root_update_wallpaper:184: Got a pixmap with depth 32, but the default depth is 24, continuing anyway
2023-06-23 15:10:12 W: awesome: root_update_wallpaper:184: Got a pixmap with depth 32, but the default depth is 24, continuing anyway
2023-06-23 15:10:13 W: awesome: root_update_wallpaper:184: Got a pixmap with depth 32, but the default depth is 24, continuing anyway

so i guess it has something to do with the wallpaper manager i'm using(variety)?

Last edited by Bluish9992 (2023-06-23 07:17:09)

seth · 2023-06-23 07:25:37

First is probably just a withdrawn window (or other drawable), X11 is asynchronous so this can happen and is no major conern.
Second means you're not running a compositor like xcompmgr or picom (the client is probably not awesome but some terminal emulator or whatnot) and the last reports an attempt to set an image w/ an alpha channel as wallpaper (which isn't a problem either, but you may get some unexpected black pixels in the wallpaper)

Check xrestop again if and when the X11 server consumes a lot of VRAM to hopefully see what asks for them (w/ a buggy client, it might get lost and no client is assigned to the pixmaps anymore, but you'll at least see whetehr the VRAM is lost in pixmap data)

Arch Linux

#1 2023-06-22 15:34:20

xorg has too high vram usage

#2 2023-06-22 18:36:26

Re: xorg has too high vram usage

#3 2023-06-23 02:25:51

Re: xorg has too high vram usage

#4 2023-06-23 05:36:01

Re: xorg has too high vram usage

#5 2023-06-23 07:15:06

Re: xorg has too high vram usage

#6 2023-06-23 07:25:37

Re: xorg has too high vram usage

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