Opening the dash causes memory usage to climb dramatically, and never comes back down

[GonzO]

This may not be a bug at all, but thought I'd report it anyway.

I am NOT reporting a memory leak - at least, I don't think so. I am simply reporting this:

When I start a desktop session, Compiz uses 85M of memory. It stays there as long as I *do not open the Dash*.

Once I open the Dash - simply pushing the Ubuntu button, and then closing immediately - the memory usage climbs to ~120-150.

If I go through every page in the Dash and open every sub-page and see every icon available, the memory usage clibms to ~185M.

Re-visiting the Dash, no matter how often, doesn't cause a further increase, but I'm not certain the Dash should use ~100M of RAM all by itself. I'm not sure how much it *should* use, but it just seems a bit excessive.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: unity 5.10.0-0ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-23.36-generic-pae 3.2.14
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-23-generic-pae i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: i386
CompizPlugins: [core,composite,opengl,compiztoolbox,decor,regex,place,grid,snap,vpswitch,move,animation,gnomecompat,resize,mousepoll,session,imgpng,workarounds,wall,fade,expo,scale,unitymtgrabhandles,ezoom,unityshell]
Date: Sun Apr 15 11:26:09 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Beta i386 (20110901)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-03-26 (20 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report, what memory do you speak about? the "shr" colum in top indicates compiz is using 30mb on a session where the dash has been used, do you look at the virtual memory number?

[GonzO (gonzo)]

I'm using the "Memory" column in System Monitor.

This appears to be "Writable Memory," and not Virtual, Resident, Shared, or X Server.

Screenshots now attached.

[aloctavodia (aloctavodia)]

In my personal experience the high memory consumption is related to zeitgeist-fts.

[Toni Förster (stonerl)]

@aloctavodi
zeitgeist-fts is a whole different process and is not related in anyway to the memory usage of the compiz-process. On my system which has 12GB of RAM compiz uses almost 1GB (as you can see in the attachet picture) after 5 days uptime.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Similarly, in bug 988079 I noticed opening the dash causes a permanent reduction in OpenGL benchmark results. At least until I log out and in again.

[aloctavodia (aloctavodia)]

@Toni Förster I think I was talking about this Bug #757727

[autra (autra)]

On my system, compiz frequently uses more than 400m.

[Fastguy (erenoglu)]

I have same problem. Intel GMA3000mhd.

[Johan Persson (johan-2q)]

Hi,

I am sorry if this is a bad place for this message, but googling didn't give me only one more suitable launchpad result and that had been maked as a duplicate of this one. Recently my computer became very slow and upon starting "System monitor" I realized that Compiz was using 5.5GiB (Sic!) of (writable)memory, 7.7GiB of virtual memory and constantly using 8-22% of processor power (if I read these columns correctly). As it happens 7.7GiB is also the amount of installed memory - maybe related?

I had probably only used open office write, evince, Thunderbird, Skype, Jupiter (0.1.9) with a second screen, and Firefox with Youtube. My computer had been on for a few days (ca 4 days) and been suspended during the nights and most of the days. I have also opened the dash many times.

I don't know if this is the same bug? I don't know if this is a memory leak? I was not clever/awake enough to take a screenshot or copy some log or something, but merely restarted the computer (the computer was also too unresponsive to do much googling). I am sorry for this. But at least this is reported somewhere on the internet now... If this happens again I'll try to be better.

Ubuntu 12.10 64bit, Lenovo T410 (GMA) 7.7 GiB RAM (not original), Intel core i7 M620, Nvidia NVS 3100M using driver 304.51.

/Johan

[Daniel Cooper (d4nc00per)]

I've just been using my pc normally for some java development (eclipse, jetty etc.) and noticed my RAM usage was quite high, after closing everything it was still at ~75% used. Open system monitor to find compiz with 3GB of RAM.
extract from `pidstat -r -p 2101 60 100 >> mem.log`

Linux 3.5.0-25-generic (ubuntu-PC) 23/02/13 _x86_64_ (4 CPU)

20:06:55 PID minflt/s majflt/s VSZ RSS %MEM Command
20:07:55 2101 7.10 0.00 5695912 4271176 52.35 compiz
20:08:55 2101 7.42 0.03 5730728 4300132 52.71 compiz
20:09:55 2101 4.12 0.00 5753256 4326756 53.03 compiz
20:10:55 2101 4.45 0.00 5781928 4353412 53.36 compiz

Any ideas of any logs I should take to post here?

[Vincas Dargis (talkless)]

I don't have this problem any more with 13.04 (x64, NVidia 310.44)!

[Vincas Dargis (talkless)]

Looks like it's back in 13.10 (Nvidia 319.60) - compiz eats up up to 168-180MB after some usage.

[Jeremie Tamburini (jeremie2)]

Same story in Ubuntu 14.04
(Unity 7.1.2, Compiz 0.9.11, Intel card, RAM 2G)

Opening the Dash will increase the memory usage of Compiz from 30 MiB to 90~100 MiB.

The system and the applications are working fine.
I didn't experienced any particular problem..... just noticed compiz increasing the ram usage in the System monitor.

[Anca Emanuel (anca-emanuel)]

http://imgur.com/8Qc211i

In the Ubuntu 14.04

[Jaime Marques (jimmy93)]

Anca, if you are using nvidia drivers try using the 337 drivers.
it improved for me its using 70/80mb down from 300mb +

[André F. Rendeiro (afrendeiro)]

On Ubuntu 14.04 with nvidia 337 drivers (not sure if that's relevant) compiz doesn't take up so much memory.
See screen atached: http://postimg.org/image/bya7hcepl/

[Anca Emanuel (anca-emanuel)]

Just use it. Search something. Use the browser to read 1000+ emails, you will get the swap of death http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2028617

[Sasa Stamenkovic (umpirsky)]

Dash is PITA from the beginning. I really don't understand why, it is really slow and consumes more memory comparing to Gnome.

[solax (solax76)]

Same bug with Ubuntu 14.10 on Dell E6510.
Compiz used ram increase each time i search something in the dash.
I have noticed that using last nvidia drivers (331.113) or legacy (304.125) does not make much difference. Using instead the xorg nouveau drivers it is much better. Used ram by compiz starts with 38Mb and I could reach 106 Mb, but not more.

Moreover in the system monitor application, selecting the memory map for compiz process I see that what is eating ram is the heap of this process. I will attach screenshot.

[solax (solax76)]

second part of screenshot

[Alex Baggott (alex-baggott)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug. We have tried to recreate this on the latest release of Ubuntu and cannot reproduce it. This bug is being marked as Invalid. If you believe the problem to still exist in the latest version of Ubuntu, please comment on why that is the case and change the bug status to NEW.

I tried this on Ubuntu 15.10 Beta 2. Compiz didn't use more than 85 MiB under the conditions you describe.