[karmic] Pulseaudio keeps taking more and more memory

[AmadeuS]

Binary package hint: pulseaudio

After updating to Karmic alpha 4 I cam across a starange phenomenon, Pulseaudio just keeps taking more and more memory, by the second... I frequently reach the point where I have to manually kill it (and then it starts over again).

This starts right after the system boots. The memory Pulseaudio takes keeps climbing at a rate of 0.2mb a second. No player is in use (music, video, flash ...)

As this is the first time I am reporting a bug concerning audio I have no idea what files to attach, so I am clipping a screenshot of gnome-system-monitor and will be attaching another one in a little while so you can see the memory buildup.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for the report, could you get a valgrind log of that crash? Please follow this procedure:
set pulseaudio to not respawn:

echo autospawn = no|tee ~/.pulse/client.conf
killall pulseaudio

and get the valgrind log running:

G_SLICE=always-malloc G_DEBUG=gc-friendly valgrind -v --tool=memcheck --leak-check=full --num-callers=40 --log-file=valgrind.log pulseaudio -vvvv

After getting the log, please attach it to the report, Thanks in advance.

[AmadeuS (sarelgrin)]

Thanks for the response.

The log you asked for is attached.

[sektor (sektor-1)]

This Bug happens in ubuntu x64 (stable release) too. Makes every system unusable after some time. After a day, pulseaudio consumes 3 of 4 G of RAM and 2G swap. It eats up ~ 0,4 Meg every 5 seconds directly after the system has started. This happens until the system is unable to handle this issue. I think this is really a major issue because the system is getting unusable slow after some time. Please note that no audio application is running (except the default Ubuntu system sounds).

Some data:
uname -a
Linux sektor 2.6.31-16-generic #53-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 8 04:02:15 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux

apt-cache show pulseaudio | grep Version
Version: 1:0.9.19-0ubuntu4

for i in 1 2 3 4 5; do ps -eo pid,command,rss | grep pulseaudio; sleep 1; done
 4100 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start 286760
 4219 /usr/lib/pulseaudio/pulse/g 3424
 4100 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start 286912
 4219 /usr/lib/pulseaudio/pulse/g 3424
 4100 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start 287012
 4219 /usr/lib/pulseaudio/pulse/g 3424
 4100 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start 287184
 4219 /usr/lib/pulseaudio/pulse/g 3424
 4100 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start 287364
 4219 /usr/lib/pulseaudio/pulse/g 3424

sudo strace -fp 4100 2> pulseaudion.strace.txt
<the file is attached>

hth,
sektor

[sektor (sektor-1)]

It seems that this issue does not happen on 32 bit karmic versions. i have checked that on a friends computer.

[Gianfranco Costamagna (costamagnagianfranco)]

I have the same problem... Why this bug is marked as incomplete?

[Gianfranco Costamagna (costamagnagianfranco)]

Opened a new bug with my kernel version...
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/506119

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

See bug 424655