gnome-panel consumes excessive memory

[Keepiru]

Binary package hint: gnome-panel

gnome-panel slurps up a lot of memory. Restarting it makes it go lower for a while, but every now and then I notice that it's quite high and I have to kick it again. For instance, right now its RSS is 216.3MiB.

I mentioned it in #229976 and was told to open a new bug, so here you go. :)

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: gnome-panel 1:2.26.0-0ubuntu7
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-panel
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686

[Nadim (nadim-redhat-bugs)]

Description of problem:
gnome-panel appears to have a memory leak that may consume up to 4GB of memory within 24 hours if the program is left running. By default, gnome-panel runs, and is necessary, on Fedora 10 installations.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
GNOME 2.24.3

How reproducible:
Here are my gnome-panel settings:
I have gnome-panel running on a dual-monitor setup, only on the main monitor. I'm using kmod-nvidia, and compiz. I have verified that the memory leak is indeed coming from gnome-panel using top. gnome-panel is using a transparency effect and runs the following widgets:
NetworkManager icon, sound icon, date and time, fast user switching, desktop icon, virtual desktop, and taskbar.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Run gnome-terminal
2. Configure it as above

Actual results:
Everything runs perfectly but with a huge memory leak that leads eventually to Fedora being unable to fork new processes.

Expected results:
gnome-panel without any memory leaking.

Additional info:
N/A

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please try to obtain a valgrind log following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Valgrind and attach the file to the bug report. This will greatly help us in tracking down your problem.

[Keepiru (keepiru)]

Here's a log over a couple hours. Memory use in the valgrind process gradually crept up from 197M to 270M during this time.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The issue is an upstream one and the ubuntu team doesn't have the ressource to work on that especially that it seems to happen to one user only but and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug the to the people writting the software (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME)

[Alex (alex-redhat-bugs)]

I believe this is still present in Fedora 11, gnome-panel-2.26.2-1.fc11.

[Christian (christian-redhat-bugs)]

I can confirm that it is still present in Fedora 11, gnome-panel-2.26.2-1.fc11.x86_64 and gnome-panel-2.26.3-1.fc11.x86_64(from updates-testing). I am using wallpapoz to change the background periodically, and every time the wallpaper changes, memory usage of gnome-panel goes up. Disabling compiz does not help.

Walkaround: disable transparency in gnome-panel and restart gnome-panel. Memory usage of gnome-panel then stays around 10 MB, even with compiz and wallpapoz enabled. Transparency of gnome-panel can also be enabled within compiz with the opacity settings for "Dock"-type windows. While this affects the transparency of all the icons as well, it does not lead to the memory leak.

[Alex (alex-redhat-bugs)]

I'm using the default FC11 config; no compiz, no transparency, no wallpaper changing.

I have a total of three gnome-panels, one for the Window List and Show Desktop on top of one for the menus, several launchers, Music Applet, seahorse-applet, Pulse Audio Volume Control, gweather, update applet, tracker, sound preferences, Bluetooth applet, Tomboy, User switch applet and Clock. Along the right vertical edge, I have another panel with sensors-applet and system monitor.

gnome-panel can use upto 4GB whilst I leave the desktop idle and blanked for ~10 hours. Killing it brings everything back to normal.

[Alex (alex-redhat-bugs)]

Doesn't seem as bad since recent gnome-panel-2.26.3-1.fc11 update, though I see nothing in its changelog to indicate bugfix. Perhaps a fix in some other recently-updated GNOME library?

Memory usage still suspiciously high and rising, though, just not into the GB range. :-]

[Alex (alex-redhat-bugs)]

I saw it again this morning. Most days I run a check on my md RAID arrays (e.g. 'echo check >/sys/block/md0/md/sync_action'), but I've not been doing that for the last week or so.

Is there any possibility that gnome-panel, or some library it uses, doesn't respond well to IO operations taking rather longer than normal?

[Alex (alex-redhat-bugs)]

OK, for me, gnome-panel's memory leak appears to definitely be caused by an md sync_action check happening in the background. To reproduce:

1. /home in a LVM LV in VG in a PV on a md RAID1 array (e.g. /dev/md3)
2. Log into a GNOME session that includes gnome-panel
3. As root, echo check >/sys/block/md3/md/sync_action
4. Observe as gnome-panel RSS and VSZ rockets upwards

[Alex (alex-redhat-bugs)]

I've found the combination of circumstances causing my gnome-panel "leak"

1) having (unmounted, cifs) mountpoints within my normal user's home directory and listed in /etc/fstab
2) the RAID scrub (which recent Fedora releases run weekly, from /etc/cron.weekly/raid-check).

Have any other reporters on the CC list got mountpoints in their home directory?

[Ze (ze-redhat-bugs)]

Our team have found the same issue occuring on RHEL 5.3 (2.6.18-128.el5 x86_64).

Gnome-panel has taken up about 97% of available memory, within about 24hrs, for no apparent reason. Note - we do not run RAID on our machine.

Could you please advise?

Is this bug still Open? Is there a patch or fix-release available?

Are there any other similar bugs, relating to Gnome-panel memory leaks?

Regards,
Ed

[Alex (alex-redhat-bugs)]

Ze, do you have mountpoints within the home directory of the user(s) with active gnome sessions?

[Bug (bug-redhat-bugs)]

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[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

The bugwatch points to the fedora bug tracker, not upstream.

[Bug (bug-redhat-bugs)]

Fedora 10 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2009-12-17. Fedora 10 is
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