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Bug 587820 - Memory usage increasing each time the overlay is shown
Memory usage increasing each time the overlay is shown
Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE
Product: gnome-shell
Classification: Core
Component: general
unspecified
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: gnome-shell-maint
gnome-shell-maint
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2009-07-05 15:40 UTC by Sander Dijkhuis
Modified: 2010-10-15 12:59 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Description Sander Dijkhuis 2009-07-05 15:40:13 UTC 
When I start gnome-shell, mutter uses about 20 MB of RAM. Each time I enter and leave the overlay, about 5 MB gets added. After several dozens of times, this seems to get less but still the memory usage is increasing. Doing alt-f2 'restart' brings the memory usage back to 20 MB.

I'm using Linux 2.6.30 and glxinfo gives:
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 945GM GEM 20090326 2009Q1 RC2 x86/MMX/SSE2
Comment 1 Michael Monreal 2009-07-07 14:53:23 UTC 
I can roughly confirm your numbers. Initial RAM usage is a bit higher for me but from there, I also see a ~ +5mb increase every time I enter overlay mode.

My system has a GeForce 7950 based card and I am using NVidia's binary driver with it.
Comment 2 Michael Monreal 2009-07-08 08:49:52 UTC 
I have tested a bit more and was surprised to find the process' growth stop at exactly 200MiB. After that I can open/close overlay dozens of times and the size does not increase anymore...
Comment 3 Dan Winship 2009-11-12 20:14:32 UTC 
is this still a problem for you?

some amount of growth is expected, since the garbage collector isn't going to run right away. but it seems to be small at this point
Comment 4 Michael Monreal 2009-11-12 22:33:51 UTC 
I have not run the shell for some time now. Upgraded to Fedora 12 and have run the 2.28 version from the repository for some hours now. Memory usage seems to stop between 150 and 200 MB. Main questions: will the GC kick in faster if less sytem memory is available (I have 4GB here, so 200MB for mutter is no problem for me, personally)?
Comment 5 Ge Gao 2010-03-23 19:20:00 UTC 
I have noticed this issue as well. The memory for mutter increases every time about 200-500 KB. After a few hours it needs about 150MB memory. The gshell i am using is gnome-shell_2.28.0-0ubuntu2_i386
Comment 6 Tobias Mueller 2010-05-25 08:00:19 UTC 
Hm. Maybe Valgrind logs might help?
Comment 7 Tobias Mueller 2010-10-15 12:59:12 UTC 
I'd say to reopen this bug if anybody can provide valgrind logs or smth similiar. TIA!