[CentOS] gigantic memory leak in Clock Applet...

ken gebser at mousecar.com
Sun Jan 6 23:23:20 UTC 2013


On 01/06/2013 05:18 PM fred smith wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 06, 2013 at 02:43:09PM -0500, ken wrote:
>> On 01/06/2013 09:55 AM fred smith wrote:
>>> On Sun, Jan 06, 2013 at 06:33:07AM -0500, ken wrote:
>>>> Fred,
>>>>
>>>> Also running an up-to-date 5.8 but with just 2G of RAM, clock-applet
>>>> consumes the following:
>>>>
>>>> PID USER PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>>>> 4133 me  15   0 29568 3748 2944 S  0.0  0.2 190:51.33 clock-applet
>>>>
>>>> My uptime at the moment is coming on 68 days.  Over time the %CPU field
>>>> may flicker up to 0.3 or even 0.7, but the RES column and others are
>>>> steady at the numbers you see.  I should add that all Preferences which
>>>> we'd expect to consume more resources (e.g., display seconds, 12-hour
>>>> time) are on.
>>>>
>>>> Do you use evolution?
>>>
>>> no, I have never found it to my liking.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> KDE, Gnome, or other WM?
>>>
>>> gnome.
>>
>> I don't know what to tell you then because, like you, I use gnome but
>> not evolution.  So our systems-- what of them which are directly related
>> to clock-applet-- are much the same, yet you have a memory problem with
>> clock-applet which I don't.
>
> here's what top reports today (clock-applet has not been restarted since
> the event mentioned in my original posting):
>
>    PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
> 11159 fredex    16   0  263m 149m  10m S  0.3  3.8   1:36.87 clock-applet
>
> in which I note it is now up to "149m".
>
>>
>> Here are some items to compare:
>>
>> # rpm -q gnome-panel
>> gnome-panel-2.16.1-7.el5
>> # ll /usr/libexec/clock-applet
>> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 88048 May 24  2008 /usr/libexec/clock-applet
>> # md5sum /usr/libexec/clock-applet
>> 9d21ca21a0e99ad26aa10e1cd5b42024  /usr/libexec/clock-applet
>>
> # rpm -q gnome-panel
> gnome-panel-2.16.1-7.el5
> # ll /usr/libexec/clock-applet
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 88048 May 24  2008 /usr/libexec/clock-applet
> # md5sum /usr/libexec/clock-applet
> 2bc9a73a5251d1b4747ec133839412b7  /usr/libexec/clock-applet
>
> it's the same version and size as yours, but the md5sum differs. have
> you perhaps disabled prelink? (I don't call that I have ever done so)
> It's not obvious to me what other (legitimate) event would account for
> the difference in checksum.

Take a look in /etc/sysconfig/prelink.  At the top it should tell you if 
you've got prelink on.  You should also have a file called prelink in 
/etc/cron.daily/.

If none of that explains things, you might want to just reinstall 
gnome-panel and see if that fixes the memory problem.


>
> If I run:
>
> 	rpm -V -v gnome-panel
>
> it shows no differences at all, so I don't think the clock-applet has
> been damaged or hacked. (but I wonder what it shows on your system, since
> yours has a different md5sum.)
>
> 	........    /usr/libexec/clock-applet

Yeah, same here.

The clock applet would be a weird thing for somebody to hack.  But maybe 
you're seeing an early sign of a disk problem.  Bit rot or something 
like it could "damage" the executable.


>>>> On 01/04/2013 05:11 PM fred smith wrote:
>>>>> I've discovered recently that something on my Centos 5.8 box (up to date)
>>>>> is hogging a ton of RAM.
>>>>>
>>>>> so a little while ago I sat and watched top for a while. it showed
>>>>> (sorry, I didn't take screen shots or write this down, so the numbers
>>>>> are a bit rough) that out of 8 gigs of swap, around 2 1/2 was in use,
>>>>> and all the RAM (except for the little the kernel keeps for itself)
>>>>> was in use (it's got 4 gigs).
>>>>>
>>>>> this might not sound bad, but there's hardly ever anything big running
>>>>> on this box, it's just my home desktop machine used mostly for web
>>>>> browsing/music/email and similar.
>>>>>
>>>>> so, watching top run for a while I could eventually make out that
>>>>> something had "1.6g" flashing in the "RES" column. slowing the refresh
>>>>> a little I saw that it was "clock applet". so I killed the clock applet
>>>>> and restarted it, then clock applet showed "11m" in the "RES" column,
>>>>> and the unused RAM was suddenly like a gig and 3/4, or so, and the
>>>>> swap used slowly started dropping while the free ram began being used up,
>>>>> as it normally should.
>>>>>
>>>>> as I continue to watch it run (10-15 mins later) I can see that clock
>>>>> applet is now showing 14m in the RES column, so it's still growing.
>>>>>
>>>>> Is anyone else seeing the clock applet hogging (tons of tiny leaks, I
>>>>> assume) RAM needlessly?
>>>>>
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