gnome-shell leaks memory (> 1 GiB), becomes janky

[Paul]

After 19 days, gnome-shell has 1.1 GiB of memory resident, and tasks such as switching between workspaces are noticeably janky compared to the buttery smoothness immediately after a fresh login.

user 1971 4.4 9.7 5070196 1190840 tty2 Sl+ Oct15 1238:57 /usr/bin/gnome-shell

Also note the excessive CPU utilisation, more than an hour per day.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: gnome-shell 3.26.1-0ubuntu5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.13.0-16.19-generic 4.13.4
Uname: Linux 4.13.0-16-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.7-0ubuntu3.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Fri Nov 3 13:49:08 2017
DisplayManager: gdm3
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-12-02 (335 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-GNOME 16.10 "Yakkety Yak" - Release amd64 (20161012.1)
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to artful on 2017-10-12 (21 days ago)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Without stack traces from a memory profiler, or confirmation that your problem is caused by a specific extension or feature, we unfortunately can't do anything and need to group this bug with similar bug reports, under bug 1672297.

P.S. The CPU issue should be discussed separately, probably in bug 1696305 or bug 1698792.

[Paul (i41bktob-launchpad-net)]

Ironically, I'm the one who originally filed that bug ... but the problem had seemed to go away, only to return after the upgrade to 17.10.

What's your preferred profiler for this kind of bug, and can it be attached to a running process?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

It's complicated. But if you're up to it then you might want to try:

http://valgrind.org/docs/manual/ms-manual.html

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I don't think that can be "attached" though. Possibly no profiler can be. You'd need to figure out how to launch the gnome-shell process manually too.