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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.
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@hotmail.com
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.