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

[fred smith]

On Wed, Jan 09, 2013 at 04:05:26PM +0100, Paul Bijnens wrote:
> 
> I'm still not really out of the problem either:
> 
> On 2013-01-09 14:21, fred smith wrote:
> >      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
> 
> 263m VIRT: We understand that virtual memory is sum of all, including the read
> only/executable parts of lots of shared libraries which are not using many
> resources in fact because they are backed by the real files.
> 
> 149m RES: The parts that are really in use by "this" program, but including
> the parts shared by many others of the Gnome package that are running.
> (I put "this" between quotes, because someone seemed to believe that
> top or ps or some other program adds memory sizes in in "unfair" way
> to some processes only, while they should have been distributed over many.
> Actually I can't find any reason, or explanation of that.)
> 
> 10m SHR:  of those 149m that are in use, 10m is the shared portion.
> 
> That leaves 139m allocated exclusively by the clock-applet.
> Incredibly large yes.
> 
> What is that clock-applet doing with 139m?

I find that to be a really good question. When I first posted, the system
had been up for (from my memory) something like 29 days, and the RES 
column for clock_applet was some number well above a gigabyte. I can imagine
that those who say it's just being reported wrong may be right, but if so
I don't see why that number would continue to grow. in fact it's also a
fact that the amount of swap in use had grown above two gigs, which is
definitely NOT the norm on this system. So I still think it's being
leaked, _somewhere_.

> Or is that just because you do have lots of RAM, and in fact, lots of those
> pages could be swapped out (= for executables like shared libraries, just
> be removed; they can be swapped in from the file itself), but never had to
> be swapped out/deleted, because the OS still had unused pages.
> 
> I have rebooted my workstation (due to postponed kernel upgrade) yesterday.
> I have now:
> 
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
> 5908 paulb     15   0  283m  13m 9496 S  0.0  0.3   0:25.29 wnck-applet
> 5950 paulb     15   0  268m  10m 8968 S  0.0  0.3   0:54.00 clock-applet
> 
> and I can't find any process that is taking large amounts of memory.
> Firefox & Thunderbird are using considerable amounts but not more than usual.
> I did not run any real large program yet (swap use is 0 now), and did not
> do heavy memory using programs except ff & tb.
> So why is my RES on 10m now? Probably because the clock-applet did not
> even touch more of the shared libraries (totaling 268m possibly being touched).
> 
> As I said, the problem of the large clock-applet magically disappeared for me
> somewhere between 5.1 and 5.5 or so.
> I remember fiddling with the seconds indicator, changing every option to default,
> monitoring the mem over several weeks, seeing it increasing, but seeing no
> trend/reason/cause. Gave up on searching intensly. And then some time later
> noticed the problem disappeared.
> Yesterday I thought wcnk-applet had the enormous amount of RAM, but I think
> I was looking at the VIRT size only then.  VIRT is a useless indicator here.
> 
> Inspecting /proc/PID/smaps of such a large process may reveal something?

well, there's a LOT of stuff dumped when one cats the file. but I have
no adequate expertise to figure out what it all means.



-- 
---- Fred Smith -- fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us -----------------------------
                      The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, 
                    keeping watch on the wicked and the good.
----------------------------- Proverbs 15:3 (niv) -----------------------------