indicator-applet uses extremely large amounts of memory

[John Plaxco]

Binary package hint: indicator-applet

Probably a duplicate of #369539, but creating a new bug at Sebastien Bacher's direction.

Indicator-applet appears to have a memory leak. I upgraded to Lucid the day it was released, before that running a clean if somewhat old install of Karmic. In Karmic I did not experience the issue. Under normal usage, the indicator-applet process uses more and more memory until eventually things start dying from the OOM killer. To combat this, I have been watching the system monitor applet's memory usage graph until it reaches a high level, checking with top to find indicator-applet at the top of the memory usage stack (currently using 882m virt, 617m res 11m shr) and then kill the pid from the command line. I have to do this twice a day.

Expected behavior:

indicator-applet sits next to my clock and doesn't cause problems.

Actual behavior:

indicator-applet uses more and more memory over time until the system becomes unstable.

lsb_release -a:

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
Release: 10.04
Codename: lucid

apt-cache policy indicator-applet:

  Installed: 0.3.6-0ubuntu2
  Candidate: 0.3.6-0ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 0.3.6-0ubuntu2 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

uname -a:

Linux motoko 2.6.32-21-generic #32-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 16 08:09:38 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Further information available upon request.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: indicator-applet 0.3.6-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-21.32-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-21-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue May 4 09:28:56 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: indicator-applet

[Ted Gould (ted)]

Is this still occurring for you? How long does it take to use this much memory? Is this in indicator-applet or indicator-applet-session?

[John Plaxco (c-launchpad-ignisobscurae-com)]

It still occurs for me. I last killed it 2 hours 33 minutes ago, and it currently is at 650m virt 255m res 10m shared. The full command line is:

/usr/lib/indicator-applet/indicator-applet --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_IndicatorApplet_Factory --oaf-ior-fd=29

All this according to top. It's also using about 15% cpu. I do not see "session" in the command line, so unless there's another way to distinguish them, I'd say this is indicator-applet and not indicator-applet-session.

Thanks!

[Soren Hansen (soren)]

I'm seeing this with indicator-applet-session.

$ ps auxwwww| grep [i]ndicator-applet-session
soren 2597 0.1 13.4 1890932 530716 ? Sl Jun23 31:16 /usr/lib/indicator-applet/indicator-applet-session --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_FastUserSwitchApplet_Factory --oaf-ior-fd=44

Do you want me to file a different bug about this?

[Bojan Cekrlic (bojan-cekrlic)]

Same thing here. Kill -TERM helps for a while.

boky@christina:~$ ps axf | grep indicator-
 2172 ? S 0:00 /usr/lib/indicator-applet/indicator-applet-session --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_FastUserSwitchApplet_Factory --oaf-ior-fd=27
 2173 ? Dl 40:57 /usr/lib/indicator-applet/indicator-applet --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_IndicatorApplet_Factory --oaf-ior-fd=45
 2201 ? S 1:56 /usr/lib/indicator-me/indicator-me-service
 2210 ? S 0:00 /usr/lib/indicator-session/indicator-session-service
 2213 ? S 37:14 /usr/lib/indicator-sound/indicator-sound-service
 2225 ? S 0:00 /usr/lib/indicator-messages/indicator-messages-service
 2233 ? S 0:00 /usr/lib/indicator-application/indicator-application-service
23805 pts/1 S+ 0:00 \_ grep indicator-

[John Plaxco (c-launchpad-ignisobscurae-com)]

For what it's worth, if I reenable pulseaudio the problem goes away so far as I can tell. Removing indicator-sound-service also stops the leak (or slows it down enough to not be noticable by me). With pulseaudio not running, but indicator-sound-service and indicator-applet running, the latter two both chew up CPU and indicator-applet leaks memory. Maybe it's polling for volume or something, I don't know, but living without pulseaudio means no memory leak for me anymore plus less sound annoyance to put up with. Not a fix, but a workaround if you don't need it.

[Bojan Cekrlic (bojan-cekrlic)]

Reenable? As far as I can tell, my pulseaudio is not disabled. Although it could be an issue with multiple users logging in and pulseaudio going exclusive on Alsa?

[ichudov (igor-chudov)]

I have the same bug! It is November 2010.

I still am affected by this bug and it is November 2010!

::~==>ps auxw | head -1; ps auxw | grep indicator-applet
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
wife 2281 0.0 1.4 359040 118180 ? Sl Oct21 9:10 /usr/lib/indicator-applet/indicator-applet-session --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_FastUserSwitchApplet_Factory --oaf-ior-fd=19
wife 2290 0.0 0.0 44564 2876 ? S Oct21 0:00 /usr/lib/indicator-applet/indicator-applet --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_IndicatorApplet_Factory --oaf-ior-fd=40
me 9664 0.0 0.0 46264 5664 ? S Oct21 0:09 /usr/lib/indicator-applet/indicator-applet --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_IndicatorApplet_Factory --oaf-ior-fd=22
me 9666 0.0 0.0 54276 6356 ? Sl Oct21 4:12 /usr/lib/indicator-applet/indicator-applet-session --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_FastUserSwitchApplet_Factory --oaf-ior-fd=28
me 10796 0.0 0.0 1864 640 pts/2 S+ 12:56 0:00 grep indicator-applet
son 21707 0.0 0.0 46880 5540 ? S Oct31 0:04 /usr/lib/indicator-applet/indicator-applet --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_IndicatorApplet_Factory --oaf-ior-fd=30
son 21714 0.1 1.4 236560 119452 ? Sl Oct31 5:00 /usr/lib/indicator-applet/indicator-applet-session --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_FastUserSwitchApplet_Factory --oaf-ior-fd=21

[ichudov (igor-chudov)]

Forgot to say, my desktop is updated daily.

[astronouth7303 (astronouth7303)]

This bug affects me on x86.

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

I've come up with a preliminary patch, which fixes part of the leak, but there still is a leak around, which I am yet to find. I'll need to observe this for a bit more first (it takes around 6 hours to tell if it's really leaking).

[Jimmy Merrild Krag (beruic)]

Could this be related: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager-applet/+bug/684599

[David Raviv (davrav)]

I Confirm that this bug still exist on Ubuntu 10.10 64bit, indicator-applet version 0.4.6.
After a single day the applet consumes over 150MB.

uname -a
Linux davidr 2.6.35-28-generic #49-Ubuntu SMP Tue Mar 1 14:39:03 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux

apt-cache policy indicator-applet
indicator-applet:
  Installed: 0.4.6-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 0.4.6-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 0.4.6-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://il.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[stenzn (stenzn)]

Same setup here (maverick 64-bit; indicator-applet 0.4.6-0ubuntu1). My memory usage isn't as extreme as some, but I can't think of any reason indicator-applet should be using 130 MiB of RAM.

[Fredrik Lindgren (fli-o)]

Seing the same problem here on Ubuntu 11.10

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 11.10
Release: 11.10
Codename: oneiric

It's an fresh install of 11.04 that was upgraded.

fli 2423 53.9 28.1 3683724 2301708 ? Rl Dec16 8657:10 /usr/lib/indicator-messages/indicator-messages-service

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 2423 fli 20 0 3597m 2.2g 1080 R 100 28.2 8657:41 indicator-messa

ii indicator-messages 0.5.0-0ubuntu1 indicator that collects messages that need a response
ii indicator-status-provider-mc5 0.5.0-0ubuntu1 indicator-messages status provider for telepathy mission-control-5
ii libindicator-messages-status-provider1 0.5.0-0ubuntu1 indicator status provider - shared library

[mikahdh (f4tmike)]

Same on Ubuntu 12.04

[mikahdh (f4tmike)]

Stopped having trouble after I disabled lifereas unity integration.

[Igor Tarasov (tarasov-igor)]

indicator-applet-complete memory usage grows each time any applet icon is updated. Animated icons speed this process up a lot.

[Charles Kerr (charlesk)]

Igor, do can you give a small recipe to induce the icon leak you're describing w/animated icons?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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