[memory leak] Gnome-Shell don't free ram when changing the wallpaper

[carlix]

Sorry for my bad english, here is the link to see the error by yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O53tt-6v81Y&feature=youtu.be

[carlix (carlixlinux)]

Please see the video (it only takes 32 seconds) to know about what I’m saying, this problem is very important because when you change the wallpaper the ram didn’t be free and then the computer will be freeze.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Please tell us what version of Ubuntu you are using and if the problem persists.

[carlix (carlixlinux)]

I was using Ubuntu Gnome 14.04 but still nowadays with Ubuntu Gnome 17.04 it is still present, this is a serious problem!!!

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks for the quick response.

Can you please use the 'ps' command and track the VSZ and RSS numbers for the gnome-shell process (or whatever is using the memory)? Then paste the history of them here.

[carlix (carlixlinux)]

I have no idea how to do that but in the video you can see the error crearly and it is still present in 17.04 doesn't matter which application you use to change the wallpapper, I tried in other computers and the problem persist.

[carlix (carlixlinux)]

An important thing: If I put alt+f2 and I write restart the ram is free again, I think it is a gnome-shell problem

[Fabricio Del Puerto (fablic2011)]

I saw the video and I can reproduce the bug, please fix this

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 17.04 (zesty) reached end-of-life on January 13, 2018.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it any more. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[carlix (carlixlinux)]

Nobody notice this bug so far and after 3 years I posted it:

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/03/gnome-shell-has-a-memory-leak-and-it-might-not-be-fixed-for-ubuntu-18-04-lts

[carlix (carlixlinux)]

The irony on all this is that the bug expired the same day that omgubuntu posted this news

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I can reproduce this problem briefly in 18.04 (where the memory usage jumps dramatically), but after changing wallpapers 3-5 times the memory usage stops growing, or jumps back down to its original size. So I think there's probably still something to fix here in 18.04. But also, changing wallpapers is not something most users do very often.

[Mike L (mikerl)]

It does seem to increase memory usage. GNOME shell sure is leaky. Glad I have the luxury of 16GB of RAM. Still should be fixed in the LTS, IMO. Even if not high priority.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Maybe keep an eye on https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/1271

[Cristiano Fraga G. Nunes (cfgnunes)]

Same problem here with Ubuntu 20.04.1.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

The video at the top of this bug should probably be removed because:

1. It's 6.5 years old so doesn't represent any supported GNOME code.

2. It shows nonstandard extensions in use.

3. It shows memory usage only increasing by around 100MB per image. If you have a couple of monitors or just very high resolution wallpapers then that is just how big they are uncompressed, not a bug. The last few images will be cached in memory and attributed to the gnome-shell process.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

If anyone can reproduce this bug on a currently-supported version of Ubuntu without extensions loaded, then please let us know. Keeping in mind that growing memory usage by a few hundred MB is not a bug - that's just how big the last few wallpapers are in memory.

[Dolf Andringa (dolf-andringa)]

I encountered the same issue, but visible through open file handles in Fedora. Every time the desktop background is changed with gsettings, a filehandle is opened that is never closed. I filed a bug report with gnome: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/5796

[Cristiano Fraga G. Nunes (cfgnunes)]

Fixed in commit:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/commit/085102be74f4c98094712a165e5128feaca50438

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

It think it ended up being refixed in 91ce5ca960879dbe810cde43265d00b5c6446a1a but still fix released in gnome-shell 43.0.