"Maximum number of clients reached" with few windows open

[wfaulk]

Binary package hint: xorg

In the last week or so, I've frequently been running out of X server client connection slots and getting "Maximum number of clients reached" errors. For example, I'm getting it right now and I'm running 3 pterms, Chrome, and Thunderbird; I've even killed my panel. 'xwininfo -root -children' produces what seems to be an absurd number of X clients (150-ish, when it's able to make a connection), even immediately after Gnome/Xfce startup.

It doesn't take long. A day at most. I've had this system up and running for months, and this just started happening. I did install some X development libraries (x11proto-core-dev, libmotif-dev, x11proto-print-dev, and x11proto-xext-dev plus their dependencies) about two weeks ago, but this problem has not been happening that long. I've installed other packages, but nothing that would seem to have any relation to this problem.

I've logged out and in, rebooted, and changed from Gnome to Xfce, and none of the changes helped. Using twm seems to help.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Feb 18 15:58:47 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
MachineType: Dell Inc. Precision WorkStation T3500
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: xorg 1:7.4+3ubuntu7
ProcCmdLine: root=UUID=45df036b-b5da-4bb9-8647-9380c6fae044 ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 LC_COLLATE=C
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/usr/intel/bin/zsh
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-17.54-generic
RelatedPackageVersions:
 xserver-xorg 1:7.4+3ubuntu7
 libgl1-mesa-glx 7.6.0-1ubuntu4
 libdrm2 2.4.14-1ubuntu1
 xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.9.0-1ubuntu2
 xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.12.99+git20090929.7968e1fb-0ubuntu1
SourcePackage: xorg
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-17-generic x86_64
dmi.bios.date: 05/22/2009
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A02
dmi.board.name: 0K095G
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A02
dmi.chassis.type: 7
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA02:bd05/22/2009:svnDellInc.:pnPrecisionWorkStationT3500:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0K095G:rvrA02:cvnDellInc.:ct7:cvr:
dmi.product.name: Precision WorkStation T3500
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.
fglrx: Not loaded
system:
 distro: Ubuntu
 architecture: x86_64kernel: 2.6.31-17-generic

[wfaulk (wfaulk)]

Are you sure that this is an nvidia thing? It feels like an xlib thing, and that's driver independent.

[Pavel Strakhov (strahovp)]

I see the same problem. My card is Intel and no proprietaty drivers has been installed.

[Jon Dowland (jond)]

I see the exact same problem with ATI hardware. So, I think this is reported against the wrong package, and I think the duplicate that is marked is incorrect. I am not doing anything more advanced than I have done for years. Bumping the client limit will just mean we hit a higher limit after a little longer. I'm pretty convinced it's a client issue, and there's a leaky client, but I'm having a lot of trouble pinning the client responsible down.

[Vyacheslav Gusev (sadys)]

some extension in Chrome may cause X server out of free client slots (for example http://www.ngohaibac.com/how-to-solve-maximum-number-of-clients-reached-gtk-warning-cannot-open-display-in-ubuntu-9-10-64-bit/ )
Closing Chrome did the trick in my case.

[Imre Sándor (seniorsamu)]

Hi,

This bug is really annoying. I read a bug similar to this one (#263211) that claims this has been resolved in 8.10. Unfortunatelly this does not seem to be the case.
I am on Lucid and affected by the bug.
And no, I am not using Chrome so that suggestion does not apply here.

Since 10.04 is an LTS release, this should be targeted to this version as well.

Thanks.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Right, this isn't an nvidia driver issue. Not even sure it's an X issue, but I'll file against xorg for now. Max clients is simply a resource limit which can be exhausted by a badly coded client, for instance.

Is anyone able to reproduce this on oneiric or precise? If so, provide the output of 'ps aux' and 'wmctrl -l'.

[bugbot (bugbot)]

We're closing this bug since there has not been a response from the original reporter. However, the issue still exists please feel free to reopen with the requested information. If you're not the original reporter, we'd prefer you file a new bug report.

Some tips:

  * Report X.org bugs via the command: `ubuntu-bug xorg`

  * Test against the latest development Ubuntu. http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/
    Bugs marked as affecting the development version tend to get priority attention.

  * The `xdiagnose` utility has functionality for enabling debugging and
    analyzing a few common X problems.

  * Tag your bugs with the Ubuntu versions you have reproduced the issue in.

  * See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Reporting for tips on writing good bug reports.