Bug 36738 – Gnome System Monitor APPLET reports wrong memory usage under Kernel 2.6.0

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Todd Geders 2003-12-29 09:11:59 UTC]

After updating to kernel 2.6.0 vanilla, memory usage in the Gnome system monitor was incorrectly reported.  This was fixed with updated libgtop >=2.0.7.  However, the system monitor applet that resides in the panel is still reporting incorrect memory usage.

I've updated to both libgtop 2.0.7 and libgtop 2.0.8, and the issue persists with both.  I've recompiled gnome-applets as well as system-monitor.  This particular applet has the Gnome name of "System Monitor" but is known as the "multiload" applet (in process listing).  It appears swap is being reported correctly, but that is unconfirmed.

The other applet functions work fine (CPU, Network, and probably swap).

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Use system-monitor applet (Add to panel->Utility->System Monitor) with Kernel 2.6.0
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
See screenshot.  System monitor application reports memory correctly, but system
monitor applet is showing memory incorrectly.


Portage 2.0.49-r15 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.2.3, glibc-2.3.2-r3, 2.6.0)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.0 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Mobile CPU      1000MHz
Gentoo Base System version 1.4.3.10p1
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium3 -fprefetch-loop-arrays -funroll-loops -pipe"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
COMPILER="gcc3"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/control /usr/share/config
/usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb:/usr/kde/3.1/share/config:/usr/share/config"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d"
CXXFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium3 -fprefetch-loop-arrays -funroll-loops -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="sandbox ccache autoaddcvs"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/gentoo/
ftp://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/gentoo/"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY=""
SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="x86 oss apm avi crypt cups encode foomaticdb gif jpeg libg++ libwww mad
mikmod mpeg ncurses pdflib png quicktime spell truetype xml2 xmms xv zlib gdbm
berkdb slang readline arts bonobo svga java guile ruby mysql postgres X sdl gpm
tcpd pam python imlib oggvorbis gnome gtk qt kde motif opengl aalib acl alsa cdr
cjk directfb dvd esd ethereal evo fbcon gb gd ggi gstreamer gtk2 gtkhtml imap
lcms ldap mozilla nls perl plotutils samba scanner slp ssl tcltk tiff usb wmf
Xaw3d xinerama xosd xml"
 
Gnome version 2.4.0

[Comment 1 Todd Geders 2003-12-29 09:13:13 UTC]

Clickable link:

http://expert.ics.purdue.edu/~geders/mem_issue.png

[Comment 2 Yi Quang (RETIRED) 2003-12-29 09:56:30 UTC]

Unless you changed the default color scheme, blue is for CPU usage, green is for memory.  

[Comment 3 Todd Geders 2003-12-29 10:29:45 UTC]

Sorry, yes, I did change the color scheme...I like Blue for all the normal things (User CPU and User Memory)...if I hover over that square (which has always shown the memory usage for me), it says "Memory 100% in use"

[Comment 4 Todd Geders 2003-12-29 10:37:47 UTC]

Sorry for the apparent spam with all the messages...

http://expert.ics.purdue.edu/~geders/mem_issue2.png

The order of the applets is: CPU, MEM, NETWORK, and Swap

I can now confirm that Swap is NOT working (I'm compiling a bunch of apps, and now the system-monitor reports the swap is being used, but the applet is not reporting it).

[Comment 5 Yi Quang (RETIRED) 2003-12-29 10:50:46 UTC]

mine also says 100% memory in use and actually I think that is normal.  The applet shows all memory usage include cache, and it has different shades of green for whatever part is used.  I'm not sure about the swap though, it works fine here.  

[Comment 6 Todd Geders 2003-12-29 12:03:13 UTC]

Yes, I was wrong about swap not working properly...its working just fine actually (just hard to see since its such a low percentage).  As for memory usage, it shouldn't be at 100% all the time...especially when the true system monitor shows well under 100% usage...from previous experience (i.e. 2.4.x kernels) I would never approach 100% except under extreme conditions...

[Comment 7 Todd Geders 2003-12-30 11:14:37 UTC]

Ok, after making a patch to fix the issue, I found that there already is a patch in /usr/portage/gnome-base/gnome-applets/files directory called gnome-applets-2.4.1-multiload_mem_fix.patch.  This patch can safely be applied to the 2.4.0 installs as well.  Looks like this issue wouldn't have come up if gnome-2.4.1 was marked stable.

Anyway to get this patch applied to 2.4.0?

The patch for bug 34701 takes care of this problem.

P.S.  (I did search before, but oddly even though I searched resolved bugs, it didn't come up)

[Comment 8 foser (RETIRED) 2003-12-30 11:25:03 UTC]

hm yeah sorry, that shouldve been the first thing suggested by us.

2.4.1 should go stable anytime now .. just needs some developer time

closing this