Arch Linux

kelvie

Member

Registered: 2022-05-08

Posts: 11

Xwayland using a lot of VRAM when resizing X11 windows

Anyone else also seeing this? I only have one machine with a video card without shared memory (is there a tool that tells you what's using VRAM for AMD/Intel GPUs?), but on my nvidia machine, on kwin_wayland and hyprland, I'm seeing Xwayland use up to 2.4GB of VRAM and not letting it go, even after I kill all the X11 apps.

I've filed a bug here:

https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/ … -/issues/1

Anyone else seeing this on say an AMD machine? or perhaps other compositors?

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 9,003

Website

Re: Xwayland using a lot of VRAM when resizing X11 windows

My AMD hardware does not exhibit this behaviour. Checked with xterm & nvtop under sway.

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seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,573

Re: Xwayland using a lot of VRAM when resizing X11 windows

nvidia is notoriously slow in re-allocating GL contexts, ie. eg. resizing them.
Maybe the driver side-steps that by allocating the maximum buffer.

Can you re-claim the VRAM by
1. terminating the xwayland server (not only the clients) server
2. and then running a VRAM intense process?

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kelvie

Member

Registered: 2022-05-08

Posts: 11

Re: Xwayland using a lot of VRAM when resizing X11 windows

My AMD hardware does not exhibit this behaviour. Checked with xterm & nvtop under sway.

Strangely this doesn't happen with xterm. Try launching firefox with:

env WAYLAND_DISPLAY="" firefox

For some reason this doesn't happen with xterm.

I've tested this on my framework laptop (which uses an APU, though), and I don't see the problem in nvtop there.

Last edited by kelvie (2023-12-29 23:32:37)

kelvie

Member

Registered: 2022-05-08

Posts: 11

Re: Xwayland using a lot of VRAM when resizing X11 windows

nvidia is notoriously slow in re-allocating GL contexts, ie. eg. resizing them.
Maybe the driver side-steps that by allocating the maximum buffer.

Can you re-claim the VRAM by
1. terminating the xwayland server (not only the clients) server
2. and then running a VRAM intense process?

Terminating the xwayland server kills the clients, so yes that works, it requires a -9 though, it doesn't respond to SIGTERM.

Right now I have a workaround that kills all xwayland programs (gracefully) then force killing xwayland.