OT: Loosing memory Re: OOM-killer prevention for master kdeinit process

[Lubos Lunak]

On Wednesday 02 August 2006 20:08, Friedrich W. H. Kossebau wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, 2. August 2006 15:59, schrieb Robert Knight:
> > > PS: Just in case somebody wonders why I hate OOM handling on Linux so
> > > much then the answer is that my 1G RAM work machine with no swap at all
> > > being trashed to death is probably the top reason why I reboot it (not
> > > that I reboot that often otherwise).
> >
> > What on earth is using up that 1GB?
>
> I would like to know that, too. I have exactly the same problem ;)
>
> Although I keep roughly the same (admittedly large) working set of running
> programs around by the time more and more memory seems to get used. Closing
> and reopening single heavy programs which e.g. might collect a lot of undo
> information like KDevelop doesn't help.
>
> But restarting the restored session helps. Every four, five days I have to
> do this to get rid of too much swapping.
>
> What could be done to find the leak?

 Run top (or preferably exmap), find the apps that look like they're leaking, 
use valgrind.

> I guessed from the above it is X, 
> perhaps keeping more and more pixmaps around noone uses anymore, but
> xrestop :
> Pixmaps:  348724K total, Other:   20321K total, All:  369045K total

 350M is a lot. Something seems to be leaking pixmaps as well.

> top:
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>  3106 root      15   0  672m 484m 1872 S  1.3 47.8  77:46.07 X
> suggest X uses much, but not 2 GB.
>
> Does anyone have a script prepared to track which processes steal the
> memory over time? Or any other phenomenon which could be the culprit?

 Not that I know of. I don't think this could be automated anyway.

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
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