gnome-shell ram usage

[ddjikic]

gnome shell is using 4gb of ram and its slowing down the system
i have opened skype , phpstorm, chrome,gedit

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: gnome-shell 3.36.7-0ubuntu0.20.04.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-72.80-generic 5.4.101
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-72-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.16
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Thu Apr 29 12:52:58 2021
DisplayManager: gdm3
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-05-21 (2169 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 15.04 "Vivid Vervet" - Release amd64 (20150422)
RelatedPackageVersions: mutter-common 3.36.7+git20201123-0.20.04.1
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2020-11-27 (153 days ago)
modified.conffile..etc.default.apport:
 # set this to 0 to disable apport, or to 1 to enable it
 # you can temporarily override this with
 # sudo service apport start force_start=1
 enabled=0
mtime.conffile..etc.default.apport: 2015-05-21T14:43:46.489165

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Amr Ibrahim (amribrahim1987)]

I can easily confirm that gnome-shell 3.36 in Ubuntu 20.04 uses 2x more memory than gnome-shell 3.38 in Debian testing.

[Amr Ibrahim (amribrahim1987)]

I think I know the reason for the high memory usage, it's the Ubuntu font. Try to change the fonts in gnome-tweaks → Fonts. Change the Interface Text, Document Text and Legacy Window Titles to Sans Regular and Sans Bold, respectively. This is the default sans font.

I didn't try to pinpoint which option exactly affects the shell.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks for the bug report. There are not currently any known leaks in gnome-shell so most likely this is something unique to your machine.

The first unusual thing I notice here is a lot of error messages about:

gnome-shell[52032]: Error getting desktop unix mode: Gio.IOErrorEnum: Error when getting information for file “/home/damir/.wakatime.db-journal”: No such file or directory

so please try uninstalling whatever software is related to WakaTime.

If the problem continues happening then please:

1. Ensure you do not have any extensions installed in ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions

2. Record the memory usage of gnome-shell using the 'ps auxw' command so that we can see exactly what it is. And attach the results here.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Actually there are a few known leaks (although most people won't ever experience them) so please do check this list:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs?field.tag=gnome-shell-leak

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks. That shows gnome-shell is using 392MB resident set size (RSS):

USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
damir 4144 9.1 3.2 4681844 392216 ? Rsl 09:48 0:52 /usr/bin/gnome-shell

The 4.6GB is virtual address space (VSZ). Not memory usage. That figure is normal and not a bug.

Your gnome-shell is only using 392MB of RAM.

[ddjikic (ddjikic)]

everything is fine now. I did what Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) suggested and removed wakatime, there were no extensions installed in gnom the memory fell down to normal levels, and the lag when switching, typing went away.

thank you, guys.