GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 518250
After copying a folder containing many files, nautilus consumes all memory + swap
Last modified: 2008-03-24 19:12:46 UTC
Please describe the problem: I copied a folder containing 7,287 files (about 530 MB) from a CD to the Desktop. After the copy completed nautilus consumed all available memory (1.9 GB) and most of the swap partition (as shown by System Monitor). I can copy these files with gnome-commander or in a terminal window with no problem. This does not occur when I copy a small number of files of similar size. The memory map for the nautilus process shows that the excessive memory is consumed by [heap]. Memory an swap utilization stay at max until the nautilus process is killed. I have waited in excess of 3 hours and it never recovered. The system is of course barely responsive in this condition. Steps to reproduce: 1. Insert a CD - I happened to be copying files from a Windows XP install CD 2. Right click on the desired folder on the CD and Copy (I was copying the I386 folder) 3. Right click on the Desktop and Paste Actual results: The files copy to the Desktop as expected. When the process completes the "Copying Files" dialog window becomes gray, the CPU utilization jumps to 100% and the available memory is rapidly consumed - about 10 seconds on my PC - then the swap is also consumed. CPU utilization then drops. Somewhere during this time the "Copying Files" window closes. Memory stays at 100% until I kill the nautilus process. Expected results: I would expect the copy process to complete and the system to be available for the next task. Does this happen every time? Yes. I have also found this to occur when copying from CD to another file system, from Desktop to another file system, from CD to a USB memory drive, from USB memory drive to Desktop or from USB memory drive to another USB memory drive. Other information: I am running Ubuntu 7.10 basic install with current updates and nothing special added other than gnome-commander. The PC is a Dell Dimension 4600 with a 2.GHz Pentium 4, 2 GB RAM, 80 GB SATA drive and an NEC-Optiarc DVD RW drive. Please feel free to contact me if I can provide any additional information. Thanks, Ken Taylor
Developers are currently busy porting Nautilus to the new underlying Input/Output system. WOuld be interesting to see this tested with GNOME 2.22 which will be released in two weeks. There will not be many people hacking on GNOME 2.20 anymore...
I will test with GNOME 2.22 as soon as I get it installed.
I just tried this with Ubuntu 8.0.4 beta which contains Gnome 2.22. The problem does NOT occur. Please feel free to close, cancel or otherwise disappear this bug report. Thanks, Ken Taylor
Thanks for the follow-up, closing as FIXED.