unity-panel-service uses absurd amounts of memory

[Robin Sheat]

In roughly 24 hours, unity-panel-service ended up with the following memory usage:

  PID USER PRI NI VIRT RES SHR S CPU% MEM% TIME+ Command
30853 robin 20 0 4283M 2832M 16580 S 0.0 36.0 3h19:17 unity-panel-service

it also starts to "forget" some icons, and until something makes them refresh, they get a "missing icon" symbol instead.

The programs that have an icon in my panel typically are:
owncloud sync client, blueman-applet, telegram, slack, google play music desktop player, nm-applet, keyboard switcher, the regular bluetooth controls, messaging, battery, sound, clock, and the gear thing for settings.

If I manually kill it, it doesn't auto-restart. When I restart it manually, it regularly fills the terminal with the message:

(unity-panel-service:30853): LIBDBUSMENU-GLIB-WARNING **: Sync failed, now we've got extra layout nodes.

This didn't occur in Ubuntu 16.04.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.10
Package: unity-services 7.5.0+16.10.20160906.1-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.8.0-27.29-generic 4.8.1
Uname: Linux 4.8.0-27-generic x86_64
.tmp.unity_support_test.0:

ApportVersion: 2.20.3-0ubuntu8
Architecture: amd64
CompizPlugins: No value set for `/apps/compiz-1/general/screen0/options/active_plugins'
CompositorRunning: compiz
CompositorUnredirectDriverBlacklist: '(nouveau|Intel).*Mesa 8.0'
CompositorUnredirectFSW: true
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Thu Nov 24 13:34:53 2016
DistUpgraded: 2016-11-21 15:53:08,299 DEBUG running apport_crash()
DistroCodename: yakkety
DistroVariant: ubuntu
DkmsStatus:
 virtualbox, 5.1.6, 4.4.0-45-generic, x86_64: installed
 virtualbox, 5.1.6, 4.8.0-27-generic, x86_64: installed
ExecutablePath: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/unity/unity-panel-service
GraphicsCard:
 Intel Corporation HD Graphics 5500 [8086:1616] (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
   Subsystem: Dell HD Graphics 5500 [1028:062d]
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-11-30 (359 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 15.10 "Wily Werewolf" - Release amd64 (20151021)
MachineType: Dell Inc. Latitude E7250
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-4.8.0-27-generic root=/dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to yakkety on 2016-11-21 (2 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 09/01/2015
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A07
dmi.board.name: 0V8RX3
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A00
dmi.chassis.type: 9
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA07:bd09/01/2015:svnDellInc.:pnLatitudeE7250:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0V8RX3:rvrA00:cvnDellInc.:ct9:cvr:
dmi.product.name: Latitude E7250
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.
version.compiz: compiz 1:0.9.13.0+16.10.20160818.2-0ubuntu2
version.ia32-libs: ia32-libs N/A
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.70-1
version.libgl1-mesa-dri: libgl1-mesa-dri 12.0.3-1ubuntu2
version.libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental: libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental N/A
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 12.0.3-1ubuntu2
version.xserver-xorg-core: xserver-xorg-core 2:1.18.4-1ubuntu6.1
version.xserver-xorg-input-evdev: xserver-xorg-input-evdev 1:2.10.2-1ubuntu1
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:7.7.1-1
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.99.917+git20160706-1ubuntu1
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.12-2

[Khurshid Alam (khurshid-alam)]

Login into guest account or any other account with default indicators. Those third party services are most probably causing this memory leak.

[Robin Sheat (eythian)]

I've started one in the background, I'll see what happens in a day or so.

This thread: https://github.com/owncloud/client/issues/4985 suggests that maybe owncloud (in my case, the version packaged by Ubuntu) could be what triggers the panel service to leak. I'll leave it closed for a while to see what happens.

[Eli (eliterdaboss)]

How *much* memory is it taking up? Be specific please.

[Robin Sheat (eythian)]

Copy pasting from the top:

  PID USER PRI NI VIRT RES SHR S CPU% MEM% TIME+ Command
30853 robin 20 0 4283M 2832M 16580 S 0.0 36.0 3h19:17 unity-panel-service

So, about 3GB res.

[Robin Sheat (eythian)]

After not having owncloud-client running overnight, the memory usage is much more reasonable:

  PID USER PRI NI VIRT RES SHR S CPU% MEM% TIME+ Command
15774 robin 20 0 617M 31344 16340 S 0.0 0.4 0:11.82 unity-panel-service

That suggests that it is owncloud that triggers this bug in unity-panel-service.

[Robin Sheat (eythian)]

Icons are still breaking though, so I suspect that is unrelated.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[huaba (huaba-net)]

Hi, same issue here on Yakkety.

* icons break
* also with owncloud-client and nm-applet as third party indicators

At the moment the unity-panel-service "eats" 7,4GB from my 16GB!

Will try to stop owncloud-client, too.

[huaba (huaba-net)]

Ah, some additional info: this appears after longer usage (about 7 hours) AND after locking screen and display suspend (using two displays with Intel HD Graphics 530 (Skylake GT2))

[Robin Sheat (eythian)]

For what it's worth, I also have dual monitors.

On 26 November 2016 00:31:47 CET, huaba <email address hidden> wrote:
>Ah, some additional info: this appears after longer usage (about 7
>hours) AND after locking screen and display suspend (using two displays
>with Intel HD Graphics 530 (Skylake GT2))
>
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