SOLVED: X memory leak in e17 due to GDM task

[djohnston]

I have hesitated to report this because, as Texstar has pointed out, e17 is under heavy development. In any case, I've been very happy with Texstar's packages. This e17 install is, by far, the most stable I have ever used on any distro.  Anyway, here goes:

I ran htop the other day on my e17 desktop to check that my folding clients were at the top of their game. They were both running in the 90% range of CPU utilization. It was then that I noticed a single task was using over 60% of my 4GB of RAM. The task was this one:

root     11100  1.1 33.3 1379444 1368664 tty9  Ss+  Jul13  52:59 /etc/X11/X :0 -audit 0 -deferglyphs 16 -auth /var/lib/gdm/:0.Xauth -nolisten tcp vt9

Running ps aux | grep gdm shows:

root      1004  0.0  0.0  17868  3392 ?        S    Jul09   0:00 /usr/sbin/gdm-binary -nodaemon
root      1035  0.0  0.0  18860  3628 ?        S    Jul09   0:00 /usr/sbin/gdm-binary -nodaemon
root     11100  1.1 33.3 1379444 1368664 tty9  Ss+  Jul13  52:59 /etc/X11/X :0 -audit 0 -deferglyphs 16 -auth /var/lib/gdm/:0.Xauth -nolisten tcp vt9
darrel   20641  0.0  0.0   3268   752 pts/2    SN+  00:28   0:00 grep --color gdm

So, there are two separate gdm-binary tasks running. I then checked this on two PCLOS 2010 LXDE installs, and one Zen-mini 2010 install. The same four tasks are running in each case. However, none of those other desktops have the memory leak problem. This seems to be an e17-specific issue. Why, I don't know. The only way to reclaim the lost memory seems to be to restart X. The three-finger salute, Ctrl-Shift-End, to restart e17, has no effect on the memory loss. It simply restarts the e17 desktop in about two seconds. The screenshots below were taken approximately 24 hours apart over a five day period, and show the cumulative effect of the memory loss.







The free -t command, taken before and after restarting X, shows the memory used and reclaimed.

Before logging out:

            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       4101156    3787588     313568          0        584    1659904
-/+ buffers/cache:    2127100    1974056
Swap:      2096440       5660    2090780
Total:     6197596    3793248    2404348

After logging in:

            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       4101156    2037096    2064060          0        584    1703576
-/+ buffers/cache:     332936    3768220
Swap:      2096440       5164    2091276
Total:     6197596    2042260    4155336



Am I the only one seeing this behavior? OK, I'm ducking and running for cover now.

[Texstar]

Try switching your mouse cursor to X theme instead of E-17.

[djohnston]

Thanks. I never thought of that. Hope it works. I'll know by tomorrow.

[djohnston]

Holding steady at 1% memory usage. Thanks, Tex!