! Please note that this is a snapshot of our old Bugzilla server, which is read only since May 29, 2020. Please go to gitlab.xfce.org for our new server !
memory used by xfdesktop grows from 8MB to 300MB in 7hrs when idle
Status:
RESOLVED: WONTFIX
Severity:
critical
Product:
Xfdesktop
Component:
General

Comments

Description Rob Feuerbach 2005-06-29 14:47:14 CEST
When running xfdesktop and leaving it idle for a long time (overnight), there
appears to be an about 10% chance that xfdesktop will grow in size until it uses
all memory on the computer, after which the machine crashes. xfdesktop was
identified as the probable cause by doing a 'ps' every 5 minutes.

The xscreensaver is running, and uses only the 'Blank Screen' setting. It seemed
that with fancier screensavers, crashes happened more often, but I cannot
quantify that.

I realize this is very little to work with, and if you can recommend additional
tests I'll try to comply.

Reproducible: Sometimes
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start up xfce, xfdesktop.
2. Walk away from the computer for several hours/days.
3. 




Installed via 'standard' rpms for RedHat/Fedora. Problem first noticed at 4.2
version of xfce, and has persisted across kernel/glibc/ upgrades/glibc (minor)
upgrades

gtk+-1.2.10-31
gtk2-2.2.4-15
gtk-xfce-engine-2.2.6-1
xscreensaver-4.10-8
glibc-2.3.2-95.33
Comment 1 Rob Feuerbach 2005-06-30 19:49:47 CEST
Now running xfdesktop manually from a window, I noticed that once korganizer is
active (which I use regularly), a reload-like occurrance happens every minute or
two, at each of which the memory used by xfdesktop grows by 2MB or so.

The korganizer installed is from the RPM kdepim-1.3.1-3.3.

The errors that pop up at each 'reload-like' event in the xterm from which
xfdesktop is running are:

*** attempt to put segment in horiz list twice
Extra content at the end of the document
   ( repeated 10 more times )
*** attempt to put segment in horiz list twice
   ( repeated a couple hundred times )
Extra content at the end of the document
   ( repeated 4 more times)

At first glance, it might be related to Bug 955.
I hope this helps.
Comment 2 Rob Feuerbach 2005-06-30 20:13:22 CEST
When running 'xfdesktop -reload' by hand, each time the size of xfdesktop grows
by roughly 2MB.  I can include a 'strace' log, if that would be useful.
Comment 3 Brian J. Tarricone (not reading bugmail) 2005-06-30 20:17:37 CEST
I probably won't have time to look at this for another week at least.  The only
thing really useful here is a valgrind log, with --tool=memcheck, -v,
--leak-check, and --num-callers=15 or so.  Generally it's easiest to use
--log-file (or whatever the option is) to get the output to a file rather than
stdout/stderr.  Note that the app will run *dirt slow* in valgrind, as valgrind
will emulate the host CPU.
Comment 4 Rob Feuerbach 2005-06-30 21:12:29 CEST
Created attachment 269 
valgrind dump from running xfdesktop

xfdesktop did not contain debug symbols, so this valgrind dump is probably not
as useful as it could be. I understand you don't have time to look into it now.
Let me know if something else would be useful.
Comment 5 Brian J. Tarricone (not reading bugmail) 2005-06-30 21:50:23 CEST
Yeah, debug symbols would be more useful, and it looks like the stacks are
taller than I thought: --num-callers=30 or so would give a better result.
Comment 6 Ilkka Ollakka 2005-07-17 07:38:00 CEST
When added xfce-menu -plugin to xfce4-panel, It also started hoggin memory (now 
it takes 107megabytes). Only '*** attempt to put segment in horiz list twice' 
error messages go into ~/.xsession-errors file.
Comment 7 diegogarcia 2005-10-11 02:49:43 CEST
Created attachment 321 
xfdesktop valgrind log

here is a valgrind log with debug syms and --num-callers=30.  this was
left idle for ~2hrs during which time the valgrind.bin process grew
~10MB
Comment 8 Brian J. Tarricone (not reading bugmail) 2005-10-11 15:06:47 CEST
Hmm... well, I'm not seeing anything I've not seen before.  Some memory lost in
librsvg opening SVG icons, but I've been over that code many times, and I'm
relatively sure I'm not leaking anything.  It's possible I'm wrong, but... I dunno.
Comment 9 G Sanft 2005-11-10 02:21:05 CET
This is real and is most definitely tied to xfce-menu (in 4.2.2 at least; just  
fetched 4.2.3.1 and have not compiled it yet).  
  
I'd seen the "desktop" process get as large as 400 MB and thought "I don't need  
that anyway" so killed it.  But I rather missed the menu, so added it to the  
panel.  Now the panel gets to several hundred MB...  
  
In the xterm from which I've launched the menu-containing panel, I get the  
errors mentioned previously on stderr:  
  
*** attempt to put segment in horiz list twice  
*** attempt to put segment in horiz list twice  
(sometimes hundreds? of such lines!)  
  
(xfce4-panel:7647): libxfce4util-CRITICAL **: xfce_desktop_entry_new: assertion  
`g_file_test (priv->file, G_FILE_TEST_EXISTS)' failed  
  
  
This happens every couple of minutes on average.  Sometimes more, sometimes  
less frequently.  In my X session started last October 10, the running log file  
I'm "tee"ing to 2>&1 is currently 50199516 bytes and of 1064715 lines, 1056719  
are the "attempt to put segment" message, and 3732 are the .*failed message.  
Comment 10 Brian J. Tarricone (not reading bugmail) 2005-11-10 03:50:19 CET
Ok, what version of librsvg do you have installed?

Can you try something?  I'd like you to remove gdk-pixbuf's SVG image loader and
see if that solves the problem.  Depending on your GTK version, it'll probably
be in /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/$major_version.$minor_version.0/engines/libsvg.*
(Note that 2.6.x and 2.8.x still use the 2.4.0 directory.)

Anyway just move the libsvg.* files somewhere else, and then restart xfdesktop
and/or xfce4-panel.  Watch the memory usage and see if it still leaks memory and
report back.

(BTW, those warning messages are harmless.  The former is a librsvg bug, and the
latter is weird but couldn't be causing a memleak.)
Comment 11 G Sanft 2005-11-12 10:48:34 CET
In my case, it's:  
   
"checking for librsvg-2.0 >= 2.0... 2.6.5"   
   
Moving the libsvg.* files which were mentioned to somewhere else had no effect 
on a fresh xfce startup.  So long as the menu is in service, whichever of the 
desktop or panel components is carrying it will progressively enlarge their 
memory footprint when so "equipped".  
  
I've not had the chance yet to compile the latest xfce release.  
Comment 12 xface 2006-02-05 06:41:54 CET
Any progess on this ? I may well be having a similar issue. 

I have been using xfce4 for about 18mths and have found it very reliable but I 
have had a number of lockups recently. 

Having made a number of changes recently xfce was not the prime suspect. I have 
not started any phorensics on them yet but this seems to fit.

I generally shut down once a day but have been leaving the maching switched on 
for serveral days at a time recently. So I have only seen it 2 or 3 times.

I need to get to the bottom of this , I do not expect to need the reset button 
on a linux box!


What is the best way to see the per process memory usage? (I need the machine so 
I can't cripple it by running xfce4 in valgrind.)

Thanks.
Comment 13 Brian J. Tarricone (not reading bugmail) 2006-02-05 07:03:24 CET
Ok guys, here's the deal.  I haven't been able to reproduce this, and I haven't
run 4.2.x in a long time.  If you want to try out SVN and report if that still
gives you trouble, fine, but I don't have the time to debug the 4.2 branch. 
4.4.0 should be out before April, so you may just have to wait.  I'm sorry about
this, but my time is very limited, and I don't have enough to devote to this bug.

If anyone else wants to give it a shot, feel free.
Comment 14 LI Daobing 2006-07-02 19:06:28 CEST
maybe this bug is caused by a bug in pango[1] then a bug in librsvg[2]. only MAYBE.

[1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=143542
[2] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=344235
Comment 15 Brian J. Tarricone (not reading bugmail) 2006-08-15 07:38:22 CEST
(In reply to comment #14)
> maybe this bug is caused by a bug in pango[1] then a bug in librsvg[2]. only
> MAYBE.
> 
> [1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=143542
> [2] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=344235

[1] has nothing to do with this bug.  I doubt [2] does either.  Comment #11 seems to indicate this isn't related to SVG.

I'm closing this for now.  There won't be any new work on the 4.2 branch.  We can track memleaks in the 4.4 branch over at bug 1910.

Bug #1042

Reported by:
Rob Feuerbach
Reported on: 2005-06-29
Last modified on: 2009-07-14

People

Assignee:
Xfce Bug Triage
CC List:
2 users

Version

Attachments

valgrind dump from running xfdesktop (43.15 KB, text/plain)
2005-06-30 21:12 CEST , Rob Feuerbach
no flags
xfdesktop valgrind log (208.12 KB, text/plain)
2005-10-11 02:49 CEST , diegogarcia
no flags

Additional information