Arch Linux

pkerling

Member

Registered: 2008-12-07

Posts: 3

Growing X memory usage

Hey,

for a few months now (or maybe longer - I don't really know since I only recently started mostly putting my PC to sleep instead of powering off), I'm experiencing abnormal X memory usage. When starting a new session, everything is fine. After starting my usual desktop applications, RAM usage is at about 650MB. Not that nice but acceptable considering e.g. that I have a whole lot of tabs open in Firefox. After a few days of usage though, I still run basically the same applications, but RAM usage is at 2394MB. That's quite annoying because I only have 1GB of physical RAM so it involves a lot of swapping and the desktop becomes very slow. One of the main culprits is of course Firefox memleaking like hell, but surprisingly X is even worse. If I close all applications, I still have 1265MB used. After logging out and restarting X, it's down to 98MB..... The funny thing is, xrestop accounts all the mem usage to '<unknown>'. Yeah. Very helpful.

Hopefully useful information:

X -version
X.Org X Server 1.5.3
Release Date: 5 November 2008
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.27-ARCH i686
Current Operating System: Linux hiroshima 2.6.27-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Nov 8 10:11:43 UTC 2008 i686
Build Date: 09 November 2008  07:16:27PM

uname -a
Linux hiroshima 2.6.27-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Nov 8 10:11:43 UTC 2008 i686 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ/P/PL Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ/P/PL PCI Express Root Port (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 01)
04:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G71 [GeForce 7950 GT] (rev a1)

I'm using the proprietary nvidia driver:
NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86 Kernel Module  177.82  Tue Nov  4 13:35:57 PST 2008

free -m with empty desktop after a few days

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1010        509        500          0         13        138
-/+ buffers/cache:        358        652
Swap:         3071        907       2164

free -m after X restart

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1010        272        737          0         18        176
-/+ buffers/cache:         77        932
Swap:         3071         21       3050

ps aux with empty desktop after a few days: http://rafb.net/p/fcnvx662.html xrestop: http://rafb.net/p/2RkgwA16.html

It might also be noteworthy that I use metacity with compositing enabled.

Regards,
Philipp

briest

Member

From: Katowice, PL

Registered: 2006-05-04

Posts: 468

Re: Growing X memory usage

There is a lot of "15000K   ?   <unknown>" entries in xrestop output; I remeber having similar problems using gnome-screensaver (I can see you use it too). In my case, for every time screen was locked there was another 4000K allocated by X for <unknown> client. Killing gnome-screensaver didn't help, but since I have stopped using it entirely (switched to xlock and xautolock) the problem is gone.

pkerling

Member

Registered: 2008-12-07

Posts: 3

Re: Growing X memory usage

There is a lot of "15000K   ?   <unknown>" entries in xrestop output; I remeber having similar problems using gnome-screensaver (I can see you use it too). In my case, for every time screen was locked there was another 4000K allocated by X for <unknown> client. Killing gnome-screensaver didn't help, but since I have stopped using it entirely (switched to xlock and xautolock) the problem is gone.

Wow, thanks, that fixed it! Now that there are at least two of us, I'm gonna file a bug report upstream.

LukeK

Member

Registered: 2006-09-12

Posts: 5

Re: Growing X memory usage

I've had the same problem over the past couple months with gnome-screensaver and xorg-server 1.5.2 and 1.5.3.
It had been eating up a large chunk of memory over the course of a few weeks and I had no idea what was causing it. I thought xorg-server was the problem, since it seemed to be attributing all of it to X.

Thanks guys!

---

- Luke

pkerling

Member

Registered: 2008-12-07

Posts: 3

Re: Growing X memory usage

Seems to be fixed.