Xorg using over 3 GB of ram (!)

timothyb89 · 02-28-2007, 09:11 PM

I came to my computer today only to find that my X server had managed to break its two-GBs-of-RAM usage record, this time with around 3 gigs of ram used up. I checked my X logs and I don't tihnk I found anything abnormal, so what could be causing so much ram usage?

reddazz · 03-01-2007, 03:38 AM

Have you run "top" and "free" to check memory usage?

gearoid_murphy · 03-01-2007, 11:20 AM

hey man, 3 gigs of ram for X is out of it, there must be a memory leak somewhere for this kind of behavior to occur. Are you using some sort a weird, memory intensive X app?. Are you using an old version of X?, I just can't see how X would be using more than 100megs max

timothyb89 · 03-01-2007, 04:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gearoid_murphy

hey man, 3 gigs of ram for X is out of it, there must be a memory leak somewhere for this kind of behavior to occur. Are you using some sort a weird, memory intensive X app?. Are you using an old version of X?, I just can't see how X would be using more than 100megs max

Nope, I'm using the one that came with openSuSE 10.2.

At this point X is taking up... 700 MBs of RAM after a reboot.

As for memory intensive apps, I'm just running KDE and I've never had a problem like this before. Just a few Konqueror windows and NetBeans apart from that. Closing everything doesn't help either.

I'm pretty sure that it'sa memory leak, but how do you deal with those? I *was* able to get 8 day uptimes and only maybe 200 MBs of RAM used my X maybe a week ago...

I might as well use Xgl... it takes up less RAM...

And by the way, this is my "X -version" output...

Code:

This is a pre-release version of the X server from The X.Org Foundation.
It is not supported in any way.
Bugs may be filed in the bugzilla at http://bugs.freedesktop.org/.
Select the "xorg" product for bugs you find in this release.
Before reporting bugs in pre-release versions please check the
latest version in the X.Org Foundation git repository.
See http://wiki.x.org/wiki/GitPage for git access instructions.

X Window System Version 7.1.99.902 (7.2.0 RC 2)
Release Date: 13 November 2006
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0, Release 7.1.99.902
Build Operating System: openSUSE SUSE LINUX
Current Operating System: Linux linux-9rw0 2.6.18.2-34-default #1 SMP Mon Nov 27 11:46:27 UTC 2006 i686
Build Date: 09 January 2007
        Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
        to make sure that you have the latest version.
Module Loader present

gearoid_murphy · 03-06-2007, 09:40 AM

here is something similar to what you describe : http://www.debianhelp.org/node/4710

ert45 · 04-15-2010, 07:27 AM

Hello,

The solution proposed in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...er/+bug/186354 worked for me: disable xinerama.

On ubuntu 9.04 (using an Intel GMA chipset), I added this at the bottom of my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and then had no more problem after restarting the X server:

Section "Serverflags"
Option "Xinerama" "false"
Endsection

archtoad6 · 04-16-2010, 01:18 PM

timothyb89,

Quote:

Originally Posted by reddazz

Have you run "top" and "free" to check memory usage?

Good advice, did you take it?

timothyb89 · 04-17-2010, 06:26 PM

Given that this was 3 years ago, I think the problem has been long since been fixed :P
But... I had to get that 3 GB statistic from somewhere, right? Probably from ksysguard or top, but whatever. I think the problem had something to do with a bad video driver on my old memory card.

ert45 · 04-18-2010, 02:58 AM

Well I had the problem currently, with a recent Linux release and it really was a nuisance. As I have a big swap space, the leaked memory just accumulated there but the machine became slower and less reactive, which was actually the side effect that made me go searching for a solution. I found quite a lot of pages about Xorg memory leaking and obviously most common drivers were poised so the problem would no per se be due to the drivers themselves. Now Xinerama is disabled on my system, the used swap space no more swells continuously, neither the memory reportedly used by the X server. Closing all apps now always brings the used memory down to just a tad more than the memory usage after startup. Hey, not having to reboot is what makes the first difference between Windows and Linux. Well actually I did not reboot, I just logged out and back in to restart the X server. But anyway.