simple-scan allocates memory for one page (possibly a lot) on startup

[Paul Natsuo Kishimoto]

1. Begin a scan at a high resolution. Observe memory usage.
2. Kill simple-scan (using "killall simple-scan" from a terminal)
3. Restart simple-scan. Observe memory usage.
4. Lower resolution (Documents → Preferences) and begin a new scan. Observe memory usage.

I ran into this problem after (ambitiously) trying to scan a full A4 page at 1200 dpi on a machine with only 1 GB RAM (bad idea). Once memory usage hit ~97%, I gave up and killed the application.

However, everytime I would restart it afterwards, it would *immediately* grab almost as much memory. I tried clearing the contents of ~/.cache/simple-scan, as well as some .tiff files I found in /tmp, to no avail.

The memory usage didn't drop until I performed steps 3 and 4 as explained above.

$ apt-cache policy simple-scan
simple-scan:
  Installed: 1.0.3-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 1.0.3-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 1.0.3-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://utormirror.utoronto.ca/ubuntu/ lucid-updates/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1.0.2-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://utormirror.utoronto.ca/ubuntu/ lucid/main Packages

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

This is due to the blank page that is created when simple-scan starts - it uses the dimensions of the last scanned page. Simple Scan should be smarter and not allocate any memory for this page.

(the last page dimensions are stored in gconf)

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

This appears long since fixed. Couldn't pinpoint the exact version but must be quite old.

[Geoff (hcopse)]

   This bug is not fixed. If SS crashes due to lack of memory, there can be no way to recover without editing gconf. I speak from experience having had a scan crash and SS would not then start and run. Uninstalling and reinstalling SS did not remove the problem. A reinstall should IMO rewrite SS to the default state. The average user should not have to delve into gconf to recover from a system crash. Is the answer to convert photo scans (2400 dpi) to .jpg on the fly to minimise the memory usage?