Bug 73156 - gnome-terminal leaks memory
Summary: gnome-terminal leaks memory
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED DUPLICATE of bug 76219
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Linux
Classification: Retired
Component: vte
Version: 8.0
Hardware: i386
OS: Linux
high
high
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Nalin Dahyabhai
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
: 75498 (view as bug list)
Depends On:
Blocks: 67217 79578
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2002-08-31 11:46 UTC by Felipe Alfaro Solana
Modified: 2008-05-01 15:38 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2006-02-21 18:49:33 UTC
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Felipe Alfaro Solana 2002-08-31 11:46:46 UTC
Description of Problem:
Just after installing RedHat Null, I made little user interface customizatioms,
but noticed that "gnome-terminal" is leaking memory continuously. To check on
this, I launched a "gnome-terminal" window, then ran "top" and chose to sort
listing by memory usage by pressing M. I left "top" running alone on the system
and could see that the percentage of memory being used by "gnome-terminal" was
increasing at a slow, but constant rate, without doing nothing, except showing
the output from the "top" command.

Also, using "gnome-terminal" for simple things like doing an "ls", etc. can make
"gnome-terminal" to consume up to 100MB of RAM. I thought this was caused by
using a transparent background, but using a solid background produces the same
effect. Then, I thought it could be caused by the scrollback buffer, but it has
been configured for a maximum of 318KB.

I think the problem is related to window updates on "gnome-terminal": if I leave
the "gnome-terminal" window completely idle, with no processes generating
output, "gnome-terminal" does not leak memory. However, doing a simple "ls"
several times, increases the memory usage of "gnome-terminal" several kilobytes up.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
gnome-terminal-2.0.1-2 and gnome-terminal-2.0.1-3 (from RawHide)

How Reproducible:
Alwyas

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Launch a *single* "gnome-terminal" (we don't want other terminals from
interfering)
2. Run "top" inside it
3. Press M to force sort by memory usage
4. Press S 1 to refresh every second
5. On my machine, the %MEM column for my 80x24 "gnome-terminal" process
increases at 0.1% every two seconds. By substracting the SIZE column between
snapshots of "top" (every 1 second), it seems "gnome-terminal" is steadiliy
leaking 244 KBytes per second. That's too much memory for a single "top" process
running on a terminal.

Actual Results:
On my machine, "gnome-terminal" leaks memory steadily at 0.1% rate every two
seconds. This is on a P4-2GHz with 521MB of RAM.

Expected Results:
I expect "gnome-terminal" to not consume 244KB of memory per second when running
a simple "top" command that is refreshing its output every 1 second. Also, after
running "gnome-terminal" for 5 seconds of real CPU usage (two minutes of real
time), its size has grown up to a RSS (resident size) of 66M. That's a lot of
memory for a terminal, don't you think?

Additional Information:
Should I bug this to bugzilla.gnome.org too?

Comment 1 Havoc Pennington 2002-08-31 15:20:22 UTC
Should be fixed in newer vte e.g. 0.8.14

Comment 2 Havoc Pennington 2002-09-03 15:39:45 UTC
(be sure to reopen this if not fixed)

Comment 3 Ben Levenson 2002-09-03 16:18:44 UTC
I don't see this in vte-0.8.15-1.
CLOSING -> RAWHIDE

Comment 4 Felipe Alfaro Solana 2002-09-11 20:22:45 UTC
Well, it's not completely fixed... I have tested this with vte-0.8.19-1 and have
found it only occurs when running the entire desktop on a Xvnc session:

If I run X-Window locally (for example, by entering run level 5, and accessing
my session from gdm while using a standard X server), gnome-terminal does not
leak memory, although it stays stable at a whopping 11MB of memory (a lot of
memory for a terminal).

But, if I configure the Xvnc server by modifying "/etc/sysconfig/vncserver" and
adding the following line:

VNCSERVERS="1:root"

then invoke "/etc/init.d/vncserver start" and next use "vncviewer" from my
laptop, when I see the remote desktop and launch "gnome-terminal", it *does*
leak memory as described in the bug report.

Comment 5 tom georgoulias 2002-09-12 01:54:44 UTC
I'm still seeing a leak myself (vte-0.8.19-1, built from SRPM). If I start
xcdroast from a gnome-terminal and create a CD, almost all of my memory is used
up in the process.

[root@gemini root]# xcdroast &
[1] 619
[root@gemini root]#
** WARNING **: The X-CD-Roast wrapper seems not to have the correct
         permissions set

** WARNING **: So do as root something like that:
         chown root:cdwrite /usr/lib/xcdroast-0.98/bin/xcdrwrap;
         chmod 2755 /usr/lib/xcdroast-0.98/bin/xcdrwrap


** WARNING **: For more information read
        /usr/share/doc/xcdroast-0.98a9/README.nonroot

*** NOTE ***:
        ---------------------------------------------------------------
        This permission warning and the following set-uid bit warnings
        can be safely ignored, if you want to run X-CD-Roast as root only.
        ---------------------------------------------------------------

[1]+  Done                    xcdroast
[root@gemini root]# free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1031032     837548     193484          0      20160     739176
-/+ buffers/cache:      78212     952820
Swap:      1052216          0    1052216

Comment 6 Nalin Dahyabhai 2002-10-17 23:07:07 UTC
*** Bug 75498 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7 Nalin Dahyabhai 2002-10-17 23:07:33 UTC
*** Bug 75498 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8 R.K.Aa. 2002-12-06 00:35:06 UTC
there are a whole family of this one out there...

bug 73226: gnome-terminal has serious memory leak (even when idle)
bug 74972: Memory leak in gnome-terminal
bug 75270: Incredibly bad memory leaks in gnome-terminal, causing entir.. []
bug 76219: gnome-terminal memory leak
bug 76410: memory leak causes swap file to max and crashes system

They are all about the same issue. Perhaps they should be made duplicates of
this bug?

Comment 9 Havoc Pennington 2003-01-08 16:02:51 UTC
If ftp://people.redhat.com/hp/testing/ fixes the problem it's an Xft bug
and can be closed (consider marking dup of 76219 or vice versa)

dark@c2i, thanks a lot for finding those dups, it really does save us a lot of
time. appreciated.

Comment 10 Need Real Name 2003-02-05 15:11:20 UTC
Havoc's Xft-2.0.4 fixed this for me.  A 'top' running on a vncviewer'd
gnome-terminal now behaves as it should, and the memory usage of individual
terms once their scrollback buffers are full seems stable.

Comment 11 Rudi Heitbaum 2003-02-05 21:57:33 UTC
We have been running this for a few weeks now, with all functioning correctly
via remote xdm sessions. Thanks

Comment 12 Nalin Dahyabhai 2003-02-08 00:14:35 UTC

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 76219 ***

Comment 13 Red Hat Bugzilla 2006-02-21 18:49:33 UTC
Changed to 'CLOSED' state since 'RESOLVED' has been deprecated.


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