Bug 4694

Summary: XFree86 leaks memory
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: hkelle
Component: XFree86Assignee: David Lawrence <dkl>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact:
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 6.0CC: wwong6
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 1999-08-29 16:16:49 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description hkelle 1999-08-24 20:57:07 UTC
Over time, the memory used by XFree86 increases.
It seems to be related to how many processes
use the X server. When I start X on my computer
the X server uses 11Mb (1280x1024 32bpp).
After opening 20 konsole processes and 20
netscape-communicator processes
and closing them again the X server uses 22Mb.
Further usage of X increases the memory used.
I'm using the XF86_SVGA server and a friend also having
this problem is using the XF86_Mach64 server.
The problem has been seen under both KDE (1.1.2 snapshot)
and fvwm (shipped with redhat6 and then using xterm
instead of konsole).
We've seen the memory usage of X go up to 90Mb.

Comment 1 wwong6 1999-08-28 06:05:59 UTC
Hi:
    After I quit X and went back to the shell, I found some of the
xterm did not remove.

    Details:
    I login into the system as 'root' and runs X windows
(startx, using FBDev) with GNOME. I open several 'xterm', when
I leave, I did not close those 'xterm' and I just choose logout
under GNOME. So, I go back to the linux shell. When I use top to
check the memory usage, I found those 'xterm' still exist and taking
up resources.

     I've try this under GNOME, xdm (fvwm95) and I still get the
same thing, but I did not try this under KDE. I use the regular
'xterm', not the 'GNOME-terminal'.

     I am not sure I have to remove all xterm myself before I quit or
this is a bug or I did something wrong.

     I am using redhat 6.0, distribution under info-magic 6 CD set.

     Please check, thank you for your time.

     Name: Wai Lun  Wong.
    email: wwong6

Comment 2 Preston Brown 1999-08-29 16:16:59 UTC
make sure you have the XFree86 and utempter errata files, they fix the
"xterms not dying" problem.

X isn't really leaking memory.  When programs use X pixmaps, they take
up server memory.  kfm is a big culprit here, and the KDE team knows
about it, they are working on fixing the problem for KDE 2.0.
Netscape is another beast, but i doubt that AOL is going to fix this.

Basically, there is nothing that can be done about this other than to
write "smarter" and more "lightweight" X clients.