I found my system getting incredibly slow, and realized that recently my X process was using over 100MB of RESident memory with a VIRTual size of over 460MB!! Thats a bit insane for a 256MB system that has very little running. I tracked things down and created a test case running 2 Xservers on the same box. One stayed around 56MB of virtual memory, as did the other, until I ran xawtv on one of them. It consistently leaked memory, while the Xserver without it didn't. I think the reason for this is that I load the "v4l" module in XF86Config to take advantage of hardware scaling when using my TV card and ability to run the TV card on both heads of my dual-head setup, and full-screen to both. You can get more configuration options (and the channel thumbnails) without v4l, but you only get 1 head, and no scaling. With the v4l module, the TV card is still used in overlay mode, only instead of writing directly to video memory, it writes to an off-screen buffer, and v4l tells the video card to read the buffer, scale it, and overlay it (via XVIDEO extension or something like that, I think). Anyway, I think its leaking. All I have to do is move a window on the screen with xawtv running and the virtual memory size of X goes up, permanently. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce:
Hmm ... seems I was a bit hasty in my last description. I'm not running xawtv, but my X process is still growing at an alarming rate. Logging in as root doesn't seem to have this problem. I can't seem to narrow this down. I'd be happy to run whatever tests you can think of.
Root or no root has no effect - the more I use X the more it leaks. Xfree86 4.3.0-r3 Kernel 2.6 mga driver (also have mga frame buffer on and it doesn't restore when switching back to teh console - seems to be a 2.6 thing). The memory leak goes through 100MB in maybe an hour. With 256MB of RAM, I swap too bad to stand it after 2 hours. HELP!
Me Too </AOL> Same Version of Xfree86 Same sort of size of memory usage. However, no v4l module Using Nvidia Driver (just one screen) Don't use xawtv. Seems to be worse when I leave Mozilla-Firebird open (including java processes), but is currently at 276Mb virtual memory with only normal Gnome stuff (panel, sawfish), xcreensave and a multi-gnome-terminal or two open. 256Mb Physical memory in an AMD Duron850Mhz machine. Have re-emerged X and nvidia and Moz. 2.4 Kernel (gentoo-sources)
chris, is it better with -r2?
Will test and report back
Have ebuilded xfree-4.3.0-r2 and tested for a day or two and found very little difference - still get large amounts of memory usage and a gradual loss of performance (too much swapping!)
What about a magic sysrq-key to show all the memory and what process owns it? Would this give any information that would be useable? Or should I just link X with boehm's GC :) Don't know what has done this, or what I changed to make it do this. Or what my setup has in common with others that leak.
Evan, There must be some common factor between our two set-ups which is causing this... I have another machine here which also has 4.3.0-r2 installed on it and that has sat for days (or weeks) and X consumes about 80M! That machine is a PII 350Mhz, Nvidia TNT2 graphics. Please post as much detail as possible (USE flags, compiler flags etc.) - there must be something we have in common! I think we can eliminate kernel (2.6 vs 2.4) and graphics card (Nvidia vs MGA) so far... Mine: USE="X gtk gnome -alsa -kde -qt postgres crypt -java" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-mcpu=athlon -O3 -pipe" CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}" ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" Chris
Yeah - I've run 2.6 and 2.4 - same problems. My USE flags are crazy ... USE="3ds acl amd apache2 ardour-ksi bindist bots cscope curl dga dnd dvd \ ethereal evms2 evo fbcon fbdev flash fluidsynth freetds gb gd \ gd-external ginac gmtfull gmthigh gmtsuppl gmttria gnomedb gphoto2 \ gstreamer gtk2 hbci imagemagick innodb jack jack-tmpfs jikes justify \ ladcca lcms libdsk libgda libww lids lirc ltsp maildir matroska \ matrox mcal md5sum mdb memlimit mng moznoirc moznomail mozsvg mpi \ music oav objc oci8 odbc offensive ofx openal parse-clocks pda pic \ plotutils pnp ppds prebuilt prelude qhull samba sasl scanner slp sox \ sqlite stroke threads tiff transcode trusted type1 usb v4l vim-with-x \ wmf wx wxwindows Xaw3d xinerama xosd xvid zeo -arts" CHOST="i586-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=k6-2 -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe" CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}" ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" /etc/fstab entries that could be relevant ... none /proc proc defaults 0 0 none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 /etc/X11/XF86Config entries (partial file) : Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Xinerama" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 Screen 1 "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0" InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" # InputDevice "Mouse1" "AlwaysCore" InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" EndSection Section "ServerFlags" Option "Xinerama" "true" EndSection Section "Files" RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/CID" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/encodings" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/freefont" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/lfp-fix" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/lfp-var" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/sharefont" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/ukr" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/util" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/ukr" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/util" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/xawtv" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts" EndSection Section "Module" Load "GLcore" Load "v4l" Load "dbe" Load "dri" Load "extmod" Load "fbdevhw" Load "glx" Load "record" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Matrox G400" Driver "mga" VendorName "Matrox Graphics, Inc." BoardName "MGA G400 AGP" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" Option "AGPFastWrite" "True" Option "OverclockMem" "On" Option "AGPMode" "x4" Option "EnablePageFlip" "True" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Matrox Millennium" Driver "mga" VendorName "Matrox Graphics, Inc." BoardName "MGA 2064W [Millennium]" BusID "PCI:0:9:0" VendorName "Unknown" BoardName "Unknown" # VideoRam 2048 Option "sw_cursor" # Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate EndSection A friend's laptop is using x11-base/xfree-4.3.0-r3 without this problem - its been used downstairs pretty heavily for almost a week without being logged out, and its at 50MB virtual and 37MB resident - not too far from what mine reads when I first log in. I don't know if I had this problem when the system was installed - but I really don't think so. I'm pretty sure it was fine, and I don't know when it started. APPLICATIONS (current version in [xxx] - its an emerge output, showing flags): [ebuild R ] x11-base/xfree-4.3.0-r3 -3dfx -sse +mmx -3dnow +xml2 +truetype +nls -cjk -doc -ipv6 -debug -static [ebuild U ] gnome-extra/gconf-editor-2.4.0 [0.4.1] [ebuild U ] x11-libs/gtk+-2.2.4-r1 [2.2.1-r1] -doc +tiff +jpeg [ebuild U ] gnome-base/gnome-applets-2.4.0 [2.2.2] -doc +apm -ipv6 [ebuild U ] x11-terms/gnome-terminal-2.4.0.1 [2.2.2] [ebuild U ] gnome-base/gnome-session-2.4.0 [2.2.2] -ipv6 [ebuild U ] gnome-extra/gnome-media-2.4.0 [2.2.2] +oggvorbis +mad [ebuild U ] x11-themes/gnome-icon-theme-1.0.9 [1.0.6] [ebuild U ] media-gfx/eog-2.4.0 [2.2.2] +jpeg [ebuild U ] x11-wm/metacity-2.6.1 [2.4.55] [ebuild U ] gnome-base/libgnome-2.4.0 [2.2.3] -doc [ebuild U ] gnome-base/gnome-2.4 [2.2.1] +cdr -doc [ebuild R ] net-nds/openldap-2.0.27-r4 +ssl +tcpd +readline -ipv6 +berkdb +gdbm -kerberos +odbc I used to run gdm, but am using qingy now, so gdm wasn't the problem.
Nothing obvious there... /etc/fstab is the same XF86Config (rearranged to match) Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Simple Layout" Screen "Screen 1" InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer" InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard" EndSection Section "ServerFlags" EndSection Section "Files" RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local/" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/" EndSection Section "Module" Load "dbe" # Double buffer extension SubSection "extmod" EndSubSection Load "type1" Load "freetype" Load "glx" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "nv" Driver "nvidia" EndSection Not entirely sure what command you did to get the package listing, however emerge -pv xfree gives: [ebuild U ] x11-base/xfree-4.3.0-r3 [4.3.0-r2] -3dfx -sse +mmx +3dnow +xml2 +truetype +nls -cjk -doc -ipv6 -debug -static I use gdm :-)
Well, I'm gonna re-emerge X, and see what happens. I'll let you know in a few days when the emerge finally finishes.
Re-emerging with different flags and such doesn't work, but this does : [4.3.99.12] -3dfx -sse +mmx +3dnow +xml2 +truetype +nls -cjk -doc -ipv6 -debug -static I do however get some errors on start-up about fonts, and DRI (still) doesn't seem to work with Xinerama (or is it another issue?), and my MTRRs (still) aren't set up properly ... mtrr: no MTRR for e0000000,800000 found mtrr: 0xe0000000,0x2000000 overlaps existing 0xe0000000,0x1000000 But ... the memory leak seems to have gone away, so upgrading was a gain in at least 1 area! Will 4.4 give me a cleaner start-up, cure the mtrr woes, and give me DRI? Only time will tell. No crashes and disk thrashing is a good start. I'm right around 64MB of virtual memory for X, and when you remove the mmap'ed RAM of both cards, that isn't too bad. Anything that doesn't grow isn't too bad! -- TARO!
tried compiling 4.3.99.13, with similar use flags, and still had the same problem!
What about 4.3.99.12? If .12 works ok, and .13 doesn't, then maybe there is some patch that was added in to .13 from the stable branch that is causing the problem. I'd try .13 myself, but I've been using my home system for a developement box to compile code for another system, so everything is a little out of whack. In the future I'll be using the new developement box at work, for home stuff as well, so recompiling different versions of stuff will be alot easier for me (Quad Xeon, 1GB RAM, SCSI RAID). I'm going to write a simple make.conf switcher with a front-end for emerge so I can develope for different systems (including my Zaurus).
aaaah, just committed bug #31982, seems to be the same. however, i found out whats wrong: turn off the xcursor theme (!)
Do either of you Chris or Evan use the fancy cursors? Or are you using the core pointer, simple black arrow? Are the video (mga and nvidia) drivers the standard X ones or extra packages?
*** Bug 50512 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Try xrestop
Please reopen if you respond to comment #16 and comment #19.
