GDM: Memory leak in .gnome-shell-real process

I can't use GNOME anymore because of the problem I explained in the following thread:

On recent system upgrades, the problem got worse. Before, I could get to the end of the day despite the leak; but now it takes around 3 hours for the .gnome-shell-real process run by the gdm user to eat the remaining RAM.

It seems that the bug is stronger in the GNOME desktop, but I've seen, at least once, .gnome-shell-real using an abnormal amount of RAM while in sway (about 800 MiB).

My current guix:

$ guix describe

Generation 61 Mar 15 2020 08:44:39 (current)

sirgazil-x 8274cd7

repository URL: https://gitlab.com/sirgazil/guix-channel-x.git

branch: master

commit: 8274cd78f9f6d58e00e057a0eabe58e4e143cc4d

guix a431a63

repository URL: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git

branch: master

commit: a431a63537c8103b2a58c9a55d90184fb5c90361

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Hi sirgazil,

sirgazil via Bug reports for GNU Guix <bug-guix@gnu.org> skribis:

Ouch.

Could you check if it happens in a VM? That is, you build your GNOME

config with ‘guix system vm’, try to do some activity in the VM, and

check in top whether ‘gnome-shell’ is growing.

Thanks,

Ludo’.

Le 18 mars 2020 10:18:11 GMT-04:00, sirgazil via Bug reports for GNU Guix <bug-guix@gnu.org> a écrit :

I'm also hit by that bug. I do not use gnome though, and the .gnome-session-real process is owned by gdm. Ram usage is at around 200MB when starting and after a few days (putting the laptop to sleep during the night), it got to 2.4GB, even though I don't really need or use it beside logging in. After another restart, it was at 600MB after a day. That memory usage is ridiculous :/

---- On Wed, 18 Mar 2020 10:09:57 -0500 Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote ----

[...]

> > It seems that the bug is stronger in the GNOME desktop, but I've seen, at least once, .gnome-shell-real using an abnormal amount of RAM while in sway (about 800 MiB).

>

> Could you check if it happens in a VM? That is, you build your GNOME

> config with ‘guix system vm’, try to do some activity in the VM, and

> check in top whether ‘gnome-shell’ is growing.

I can try, but last time I did something like that the VM with GNOME was too slow to do anything (this computer only has 4 GiB of RAM).

I tried a virtual machine with my system configuration during 4 hours and couldn't reproduce the leak (I used "guix system vm"). ".gnome-shell-real" kept using about 260 MiB of RAM and it actually went down to 220 at some point.

In 4 hours, in my real system, the leak would have been visible.

I'm planning to create another virtual machine with "guix system vm-image" instead to install all the packages I have in my user profile and leave it running overnight to see if there is any difference.

severity 40116 important

quit

I wasn't able to create the VM image with this method. After an hour, the image was still building. I interrupted the process and gave up.

I experience the same as Julien yesterday in a computer reconfigured with sway (no GNOME), but still using GDM. Here's a screenshot of "top" with gdm's .gnome-shell-real using 2.5 GiB of RAM:

I'm currently trying other other desktop environments in combination with slim login manager to work around the issue.

I've been using a configuration with SLiM and GNOME for more than 20 hours with no leaks.

Ludovic Courtès writes:

That looks like an upstream problem

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/issues/64

are we going to investigate backporting a fix?

janneke

--

Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org> | GNU LilyPond http://lilypond.org

Freelance IT http://JoyofSource.com| Avatar® http://AvatarAcademy.com

Jan Nieuwenhuizen writes:

Sorry, this is not helping.

--

Jan Nieuwenhuizen <janneke@gnu.org> | GNU LilyPond http://lilypond.org

Freelance IT http://JoyofSource.com| Avatar® http://AvatarAcademy.com

severity 41215 important

merge 41215 40116

I've been using GDM again for 8 days now, and I don't see the leak anymore.

(Using guix 97e98e2)

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Luis Felipe López Acevedo

Hi,

On Wed, 18 Mar 2020 at 09:18, sirgazil <sirgazil@zoho.com> wrote:

[...]

What is the status of this old bug [1]? Especially since the last merge

of core-updates.

1: http://issues.guix.gnu.org/issue/41215

Cheers,

simon

Hi zimoun,

On Wednesday, March 23rd, 2022 at 11:35 AM, zimoun <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> wrote:

At least on my side (I'm sirgazil), the status remains the same: this is not an issue anymore.

I didn't close the issue, though, because I wanted to hear from other people affected by it first.

So, if Julien and Arne, for example, don't experience the issue anymore, I'm happy to close the issue.

Hi Luis,

On Wed, 23 Mar 2022 at 16:13, Luis Felipe <luis.felipe.la@protonmail.com> wrote:

Let wait 15 days and if no answer, let assume it is not an issue and

close it. :-)

Thank you for your feedback.

Cheers,

simon

On March 23, 2022 4:46:53 PM GMT+01:00, zimoun <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> wrote:

I haven't had that issue in a while, I tgink we can close.

Ok, the issue is gone :)

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Luis Felipe López Acevedo