Memory leaks in Ubuntu?

[Michael Butash]

Meh, I've had too many ati cards die and freak out my systems, which is
what drove me to NV.  I haven't had one NV die, but obviously comes with
other issues...  Besides I've come to rely on VDPAU for 1080p decoding
on some of my 8x00 NV card systems that I won't give up on (yet) since
ATI chooses not to support it or another reasonable alternative.

-mb


On Thu, 2009-08-06 at 16:14 +0000, tshipley at deru.com wrote:
> Buy a non-nVidia video card?
> 
> 
> Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone provided by Alltel
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephen <cryptworks at gmail.com>
> 
> Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2009 08:51:32 
> To: <michael at butash.net>; Main PLUG discussion list<plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
> Subject: Re: Memory leaks in Ubuntu?
> 
> 
> i know all nvidia cards have a "turbo Cache" option to swipe some
> system memory for graphics rendering it may be that the driver is
> grabbing this and not releaseing it back.. this may be the killer.
> 
> how to resolve. i am not sure.
> 
> On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Michael Butash<michael at butash.net> wrote:
> > True enough it is tied to caching, but the fact it's marked as inactive
> > when I can definitely attribute application termination from lack of
> > memory is what I note as a problem.  The system does not give this back
> > in the way of virtual or physical memory.  The system does however
> > behave well enough as long as physical memory is present to give, but
> > watching a graph of the physical memory is *like* watching a memory
> > leak, whether it properly is or isn't, and end of the road is definitely
> > noticeable with performance on said system.
> >
> > Here's what a normal vmstat looks like currently, notice the caching:
> >
> > procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system--
> > ----cpu----
> >  r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy
> > id wa
> >  0  0   4096 224988  69472 5676224    0    0     2    31   12   41  7  6
> > 86  1
> >
> > Here's what vmstat -a looks like currently with "inact" having most:
> >
> > mb at thrawn:~$ vmstat -a
> > procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system--
> > ----cpu----
> >  r  b   swpd   free  inact active   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy
> > id wa
> >  2  0   4096 223196 5737708 1900724    0    0     2    31   12   41  7
> > 6 86  1
> >
> > Physical memory has nothing with free -m:
> >
> >             total       used       free     shared    buffers
> > cached
> > Mem:          7888       7673        214          0         68
> > 5543
> > -/+ buffers/cache:       2062       5826
> > Swap:         1023          4       1019
> >
> > When it loses all physical memory, the system slows waay down, java apps
> > get weird (jbidwatcher is the java cancer for me), anything rendering
> > video won't scale, my gl screensaver bogs waaay down.  Totem, vlc, or
> > other will simply just crash if run long enough in this state, but I
> > haven't caught the segfault or anything.
> >
> > I've used just about any build within the past 4 years or so of the NV
> > proprietary drivers, and nothing resolves it, though many have said
> > there are issues with 64bit.  I can't attribute anything to actually
> > using the memory, and typically where I've seen leaks like this I can
> > always find something even in excess processes running away or ipc
> > threading even.
> >
> > I've lived with it so long it's just just *there*, but I'd kill to fix
> > whatever the heck it is.  No amount of research has ever resulted in a
> > fix for me.
> >
> > Thanks for the input!
> >
> > -mb
> >
> >
> > On Wed, 2009-08-05 at 20:19 -0700, Joseph Sinclair wrote:
> >> I have had major problems with the NVidia proprietary drivers, particularly with Ubuntu 9.04.  It seems like NVidia introduced a ton of REALLY bad bugs when they had to almost rewrite the drivers for the changes in the new XOrg server.
> >> I haven't seen the memory behavior you describe, but have you checked to be certain this isn't buffers and/or cache memory?  I know all of my machines running any desktop distro tend to slowly accumulate cache until me
> >> mory is "full", but none of them have performance issues, since the kernel just reclaims cache LRU when it needs the RAM back.  I also see fairly large amounts of "inactive" memory, but I never seem to have problems with the system reclaiming that as needed.
> >>
> >>
> >> Michael Butash wrote:
> >> > Has anyone else seen or experienced persistent memory leaks with ubuntu
> >> > 32bit or 64?  I've literally had issues with it that may or may not be
> >> > particularly ubuntu issues back to 7.04 that I first noticed.  The only
> >> > thing really in common system-wise is the hardware, and I somewhat
> >> > suspect it's Nvidia driver related, but nothing really indicates any
> >> > particular app.  My primary desktop I use heavily just about anything,
> >> > but I have another system that's sole purpose is to play movies and
> >> > music on my TV I do almost nothing with that experiences the same
> >> > issues, NVidia card as well.  With compiz or without this happens.  Only
> >> > thing I haven't tried is running the NV drivers, but I rely on the
> >> > acceleration far too much on both systems.
> >> >
> >> > What I have noticed is there are no direct applications hogging memory
> >> > via top, rather it seems virtual memory ends up simply taking over all
> >> > physical memory and keeping it as "inactive" via "vmstat -a".  Signs of
> >> > this include firefox flipping out, rendering/scaling video larger than
> >> > default, and just anything else that requires excessive memory use
> >> > having issues.  I graph my physical memory usage via snmp, and I can
> >> > pretty accurately gauge how long I have until I need to do a hard reboot
> >> > to reclaim the "inactive" memory.  It mostly works even memory starved
> >> > in this condition, just limits my usage, and even restarting x doesn't
> >> > help.  Interestingly enough, neither system ever swaps at all...
> >> >
> >> > Has anyone successfully ever dealt with an issue like this killing
> >> > virtual memory?  I really can't imagine I'm the only one...  I've hunted
> >> > far and wide of the great interweb for a way to release the "inactive"
> >> > memory, as I'd even just go so far as to purge it once a day via cron if
> >> > I had to, but I can find nothing of forcefully clearing inactive/dirty
> >> > virtual memory space.  I've seen others complain of the same behavior,
> >> > but have only seen the same rhetoric that "trust linux virtual memory
> >> > behavior, that's what it's supposed to do".  Act like a stupid windoze
> >> > me install and reboot daily?  I think not...
> >> >
> >> > -mb
> >> >
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