massive memory leak

[nero_O]

using the pidgin screenlet on Ubuntu Hardy Heron x64 :: the screenlet uses upwards of 120MB of ram after time

[nero_O (nero-o)]

I've now been running my computer for 2 days and the screenlet to my horror, is using 535 MB of ram!

[vrunner (varunratnakar)]

Thanks for the bug report nero_O.

I've been running the screenlet on my end for a day continously now, and haven't been able to replicate this behaviour.

Could you please try the latest development version and tell us if it improves things ?
You could either check it out using bzr:
  bzr branch http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~pidgin-screenlet-team/pidgin-screenlet/trunk

Or, you could just download the package attached to this message.

[Mark Parigger (mark-climber)]

With version 0.3.3 the screenlet still requires too much memory (100-200 MiB).
Pidgin itself only requires about 10-20 MiB and I can't think of a reason why a frontend should use more then ten times the amount of a combined front&backend.

[Scott Brown (scotty-b-brown)]

I'm seeing the same behaviour on 9.04

Using 0.3.3 pidgin screenlet - after a few days its up to about 500mb...

[smoohta (smoohta)]

This is a known issue with some of the default screenlets.
This thread gives details on what needs to be changed for these memory leaks to stop - http://forum.compiz-fusion.org/showthread.php?s=0d0e639fecc3463c25ae5c9b2143d40a&t=3576
I've applied the fix to pidgin-screenlet myself and after a couple of days there really doesn't seem to be any leaks...

As far as I know there's no community effort to fix all the screenlets (even though the thread is from Aug 07 :)) but this fix is fairly easy to apply anyway... if you need more details feel free to message me.

[Adam Russ (mail-russ)]

@smoohta - any chance of posting the fix's you did? i cant seem to get it done from the link instructions

[smoohta (smoohta)]

Hi Adam,
Here are the fixes I did based on the thread I linked to:
Downloaded PidginScreenlet 0.3.3., extracted it and opened PidginScreenlet.py.

In class PidginScreenlet (screenlets.Screenlet):
I added the following line to create a global variable:

                p_layout = None

And then replaced every instance of p_layout = ctx.create_layout() with the following (this only appeared twice- in line 818 and line 1348):

  if self.p_layout == None :
   self.p_layout = ctx.create_layout()
  else:
   ctx.update_layout(self.p_layout)

Saved the file and in a console entered the following:
screenlets-packager *dir_screenlet_was_extracted_to*

and this should create a PidginScreenlet-0.3.3.tar.gz file, right click on screenlets manager, choose install and point it to the file.

After writing all this down I saw that you can add an attachment, oh well :)
I've also attached the fixed .tar.gz that I created, in case you don't want to go into fixing it manually... this version also has a cute little option I added- to auto-start Pidgin in case it isn't already open... I find it pretty useful but you can disable it if you want :)

[meek (meek.)]

thanks smoohta. the fix is commited. can someone please confirm that it works?

[Andrea Calabrò (mastropino)]

It don't work :(