Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 08:01:26 -0600 From: Jonathan Fosburgh <jonathan@fosburgh.org> To: Eric Anholt <eta@lclark.edu> Cc: kde@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Possible memory leak in XFree86 Message-ID: <200401210801.31483.jonathan@fosburgh.org> In-Reply-To: <1074277065.725.4.camel@leguin> References: <200401160820.19794.jonathan@fosburgh.org> <1074277065.725.4.camel@leguin>
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=2D----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Adding kde@ and following up below. On Friday 16 January 2004 12:17 pm, Eric Anholt wrote: > On Fri, 2004-01-16 at 06:20, Jonathan Fosburgh wrote: > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > > Hash: SHA1 > > > > I am cross-posting this to -current, since the problem is occuring in > > that environment. > > > > I first noticed this as far back as 5.0-RELEASE, but I had chalked it up > > to being hardware-related, for reasons I shall get into shortly. The > > problem has persisted throught XFree86 4.3.x (and through the most > > current snapshot available in the ports). I am also running KDE 3.x > > (3.1.x and now 3.2 BETA2). I am running -CURRENT (updated within the > > past couple of weeks) on a Pentium III-600mHz with 383MB (from dmesg) > > RAM. Originally, I had an nvidia Riva TNT2 video card. For a brief ti= me > > I used the nvidia drivers, but those were so unstable I never found out > > if this particular problem was reproduceable with them. I now have an A= TI > > Radeon 9200 and I see the same things. > > > > What is happening is that the X server slowly allocates more memory unt= il > > all physical RAM and page space are allocated, and the pager starts > > killing off processes, eventually killing the X server. This seems to > > screw up syscons as well, and I wind up having to reboot to get my text > > consoles back. Things have gotten slightly better of late, sometimes the > > memory is freed and the XFree86 process might go from say 400+MB > > (according to top) down to a little less then 200MB, which appears to be > > normal for the Radeon using DRI. But this is not always the case. When= I > > come in in the mornings I either find my system very low on page space, > > or if I am gone for a couple of days I will generally find that X has > > been killed. I run screensavers and have DPMS set up to send the monit= or > > to power-save mode. I have reduced my screensaver to just blanking the > > screen, but still to no avail. This morning, I came in (after having > > been out yesterday) to find that X had been killed after running out of > > page space. > > > > Now, here is why I initially thought it was hardware related (that is, = in > > the nvidia driver for XFree86): at home I have a Pentium III-600 with > > about the same amount of memory, running XFree86 4.3.x, KDE 3.1.x, > > screensavers, DPMS, etc. The differences are that at home I have an SiS > > ViRGE video card (incidentally, PCI versus AGP for work), and I am > > tracking -STABLE there. Only every once in awhile do I run out of page > > space at home, but my paging space is undersized there, whereas at work > > it is set to the recommended size from when I did the install, 753MB. > > > > Where I am at now is trying to figure out where the memory is going, and > > how to prevent it. :) Can anyone help me diagnose this? > > Every month or so I see someone saying they think XFree86 is leaking > memory. Of course, with this release of XFree86 having been out for > about a year now, there are probably no major memory leaks, especially > with such a commonly used driver like ATI. > > The X Server allocates memory on behalf of clients. What you are > seeing, I'm willing to bet, is some application you run is leaking > pixmaps, so the X Server continues allocating memory for it until OOM > killer starts killing things off. You could try, when the memory usage > is very large, killing your apps off one by one and seeing when the > memory usage in the server goes back down. I observed my work system over the weekend, and around the time that the=20 XFree86 process reached 425M I killed konqueror. At this point memory usag= e=20 for X stopped increasing, but no memory was ever freed, even after logging= =20 out of KDE. The kdeinit process for konqueror showed ~150M (give or take=20 about 15M), which is what it (and every other instance of kdeinit) always=20 shows. Following a reboot yesterday, I started using opera, and now my=20 XFree86 process is topping out around 195M. Sometimes a little more memory= =20 is allocated but it is freed fairly quickly. Now, contrast this to my setup at home where I use konqueror and keep it=20 running all the time. As I state above, there are relatively few differenc= es=20 aside from -CURRENT at work and -STABLE at home and hardware, which it seem= s=20 should not be an issue. Now who knows, maybe this will magically stop when= =20 3.2-RELEASE comes out, but given this has been happening for awhile (and=20 across several releases), I'm not too confident of that happening. I also= =20 find it odd that I would be the only one seeing this. Is there anything=20 further I can do to try to figure out what is going on? =2D --=20 Jonathan Fosburgh AIX and Storage Administrator UT MD Anderson Cancer Center Houston, TX =2D----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQFADoY7qUvQmqp7omYRAnvqAKDAK8D8IAhPX1XsV0QLqfxC0XpM+QCg0niP RPFbn0BCsLuR4ds+5quVlCA=3D =3D56CE =2D----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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