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Tasklist

FS#48828 - [gnome-shell] enourmous memory leak

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Dimitrios Charalampidis (dsch) - Wednesday, 06 April 2016, 21:36 GMT
Last edited by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Friday, 08 April 2016, 21:38 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To Jan de Groot (JGC)
Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig)
Architecture All
Severity Critical
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 1
Private No

Details

Description:
gnome-shell leaks enormous amounts of memory that makes the system unusable in a matter of hours.

I tried to track down the problem for several days and I found the following:
The problem is related to the GDM display manager (tested with extra/gdm 3.18.2-1), removing gdm solves the problem.
The pace at which the memory is consumed depends on the video drivers:

- with extra/nvidia-340xx 340.96-8 8GB of memory with idle usage are leaked in about 3-4 hours.
- with extra/xf86-video-nouveau 1.0.12-1 more than 10 hours are needed.

What's interesting is that gnome-system-monitor will not show the leakage; it continues to report gnome-shell at around 200-300MB, but htop shows the real usage.

Additional info:
* package version(s)
GNOME Shell 3.18.4
* config and/or log files etc.


Steps to reproduce:
Reproduction is easy, just open the PC and wait 3-4 hours.
The process shell-gnome --mode=gdm just gets bigger and bigger, until it consumes all available memory and swap and then the system lags.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Jan de Groot (JGC)
Friday, 08 April 2016, 21:38 GMT
Reason for closing:  Fixed
Comment by Doug Newgard (Scimmia) - Thursday, 07 April 2016, 14:14 GMT
Does this happen with 3.20, currently in testing?
Comment by Dimitrios Charalampidis (dsch) - Thursday, 07 April 2016, 14:53 GMT
I have more serious problems with the 3.20:

Whenever the screen goes off - the system becomes unusable.
There is no way to return to X or to open a new tty - the only think that works is the physical reset button of the computer.
Comment by Dimitrios Charalampidis (dsch) - Thursday, 07 April 2016, 16:27 GMT
Here is a screenshot of htop after 3hours of up-time.
   Screenshot from 2016-04-07 19... (17.6 KiB)
Comment by Dimitrios Charalampidis (dsch) - Thursday, 07 April 2016, 17:29 GMT
Here is a screenshot of htop after 3hours of up-time.
   Screenshot from 2016-04-07 19... (17.6 KiB)
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Friday, 08 April 2016, 07:54 GMT
You might want to patch gnome-shell with https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell/patch/?id=045e1f01afebb25ee3c5a2332edda9bb34190f3c

3.20 doesn't have this patch applied yet, so that version will also leak memory. I don't know if this leak is responsible for your bug, but it's fixed by an nvidia employee, so I think it's the same bug.

Comment by Dimitrios Charalampidis (dsch) - Friday, 08 April 2016, 09:11 GMT
Thank you Jan,

But could you please assist on how to apply the patch?

I don't really know how to do it.
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Friday, 08 April 2016, 11:13 GMT
Please try 3.18.4-2 in extra (or 3.20.0-2 in testing if you run GNOME 3.20).
Comment by Dimitrios Charalampidis (dsch) - Friday, 08 April 2016, 11:16 GMT
OK, just upgraded - I will check the results and let you know.
Thank you very much.
Comment by Dimitrios Charalampidis (dsch) - Friday, 08 April 2016, 17:59 GMT
Jan, I am so thankful!
The new version stopped the leak indeed.
More than 6 hours of up-time and it seems that there is no leak.
   Screenshot from 2016-04-08 20... (20.2 KiB)

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