Description of problem: Memory leak in pulseaudio Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): pulseaudio-0.9.15-17.fc11.i586 How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1. configure pulseaudio as default sound system in gnome 2. run smplayer, firefox+flash and other programs that use audio output Actual results: ark 2126 2.9 1.0 178692 21284 ? Ssl Nov14 50:19 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog after 1.5 days uptime and keeps growing Expected results: ark 2507 2.2 0.2 100932 4360 ? Ssl 22:17 0:00 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start --log-target=syslog Additional info: 00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Compaq nw8240/nx8220 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 21 Region 0: I/O ports at 3100 [size=256] Region 1: I/O ports at 3200 [size=64] Region 2: Memory at c8c01000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512] Region 3: Memory at c8c02000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2 Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=375mA PME(D0+,D1-,D2-,D3hot+,D3cold+) Status: D0 NoSoftRst- PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME- Kernel driver in use: Intel ICH Kernel modules: snd-intel8x0
Uh. That's not how you detect a memory leak. Use valgrind for that. "ps"/"top" are really not suitable at all for figuring out the memory consumptions of processes. This LWN article has a few hints how to better measure memory consumption: http://lwn.net/Articles/230975/ The biggest part of the memory PA allocates is probably taken up buy the event sound cache. You can use "pacmd list-samples" to figure out how many that takes up. Also, "pacmd stat" will tell you how much audio data blocks PA has allocated. And you can use "pacmd vacuum" to make sure PA gives memory back to the OS that it has alocated previously.
Ok so this is not a memory leak. Lets call it resource exhaustion. On my laptop when I leave it running over night a pulseaudio process will suck back all free memory and run the system into swap. killing pulseaudio frees up the ram. take a look at ubuntu bug 424655.