gnome-shell leaks mem, 1.3G reserved after few days of uptime

[Andrey Lelikov]

gnome-shell leaks memory like crazy. after 4 days of uptime it uses 13.8G virt and 1.3G reserved mem. This is after I switched to wayland to mitigate the same issue, but on X.org it was much more crazier - about 20G virt / 1.5G reserved after one-two days of uptime, only the leak was in X.org process (2 of them, greeter and main), not gnome-shell.

p.s. I do understand that gnome is the best piece of software, and I just use it incorrectly - likely I have some extension or application that is at fault. The bug report is sort of rhetorical.

p.p.s. Unmodified LTS system (focal). Started to manifest about a month ago, out of the blue, no changes...

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: gnome-shell 3.36.9-0ubuntu0.20.04.2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.11.0-38.42~20.04.1-generic 5.11.22
Uname: Linux 5.11.0-38-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.21
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: GNOME-Classic:GNOME
Date: Sat Nov 6 01:50:41 2021
DisplayManager: gdm3
RelatedPackageVersions: mutter-common 3.38.4-1ubuntu2
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
monitors.xml: Error: path contained symlinks.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks for the bug report.

First please look in $HOME/.local/share/gnome-shell and ensure there is no directory named 'extensions'. If there is one then remove it and log in again.

Similarly please open the 'Extensions' app and ensure you only find the three Ubuntu extensions listed.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Also 'virt' memory is not real and should be ignored.

I can't tell what you mean by "reserved" memory but next time you encounter the problem please run:

  ps auxw | grep gnome-shell

and paste the output here.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gnome-shell (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]