Mate Panel consumes huge amount of memory even when idling

[Sumitro Bhaumik]

There might be a possible memory leak in mate-panel. Within 24 hours, it ate around 4 GB of memory. This has been reported and supposedly fixed but I have not received the patch yet. Please check the attached image which shows the memory consumption.

The following links also showcase the problem
https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-panel/issues/809
https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-panel/pull/866

*EDIT*
Using mate version 1.20.1
Small typo - I did *not* receive the patch

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Pavel (spvkgn)]

I can confirm, in 18.04

$ ps v -C mate-panel
  PID TTY STAT TIME MAJFL TRS DRS RSS %MEM COMMAND
 7398 ? Sl 0:29 7 566 1248589 708412 11.6 mate-panel --replace

After ~20 minutes:

  PID TTY STAT TIME MAJFL TRS DRS RSS %MEM COMMAND
 7398 ? Sl 0:31 7 566 1292469 752760 12.3 mate-panel --replace

[Pavel (spvkgn)]

I've found what causes this bug in my case - mate-netspeed-applet. If I remove it from panel, this issue does not occur.

[Sumitro Bhaumik (sumitros)]

I'll try to verify this

On Thu 25 Oct, 2018, 5:41 PM Pavel, <email address hidden> wrote:

> I've found what causes this bug in my case - mate-netspeed-applet. If I
> remove it from panel, this issue does not occur.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1793465
>
> Title:
> Mate Panel consumes huge amount of memory even when idling
>
> Status in mate-panel package in Ubuntu:
> Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> There might be a possible memory leak in mate-panel. Within 24 hours,
> it ate around 4 GB of memory. This has been reported and supposedly
> fixed but I have not received the patch yet. Please check the attached
> image which shows the memory consumption.
>
> The following links also showcase the problem
> https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-panel/issues/809
> https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-panel/pull/866
>
> *EDIT*
> Using mate version 1.20.1
> Small typo - I did *not* receive the patch
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mate-panel/+bug/1793465/+subscriptions
>

[Jim Lewis (jimlewis5268)]

I also have this problem on the Fedora 28 Mate Spin (I hope it's okay to put that here). I routinely set the clock to show the seconds and that really uses up the memory. Note that with absolutely nothing "refreshing" the screen there is still some leakage. I have been using Fedora since version 3 and I have never seen this before. For example, I have a Fedora 27 Mate laptop that has been running for 381 days, no leaks of any kind.

I have several computers to test things on and so if I can be of any help on this please let me know.

[Jim Lewis (jimlewis5268)]

Not sure if this helps anyone here but thought I should follow up. This memory leak issue appears to have been fixed* on the Fedora 30 Mate Spin Beta (mate-panel-1.22.0-3.fc30.x86_64). It's only been up for 4 days, however, mate-panel started at 0.5 memory usage and has not changed at all.
I am running the clock with seconds, the System Monitor, and everything else I can think of to try and see the leak again and it's not happening. I expect to see uptimes of 400+ days again, yay!

*fixed: As in I didn't have to change any files or not run the seconds on the clock. It now works as it did in all the previous versions of Fedora before 28.

[Martin Wimpress  (flexiondotorg)]

Fixed via mate-panel 1.24.1-0ubuntu1 in Ubuntu Groovy.

[Saptarshi Roy (sroypc)]

This is appreciated, Martin.

[Saptarshi Roy (sroypc)]

I can also confirm that on my Ubuntu MATE 20.04, if the system is not rebooted for days then there is an astronomical amount of usage of the CPU, RAM as well as the SWAP memory.

'Top' and 'System Monitor' show the culprits to be Evolution (Calendar ?) and Indicator Date Time Service.

I use Evolution and have also configured the time to show the seconds, but I'm not aware as to what is leading to all this.

[Axel G. Rossberg (axel-rossberg)]

I am running (vanilla) Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS and see the exact same issues that Saptarshi Roy reported 4 years ago.

I might add that I am using Evolution EWS. If the issue stems from this, it might explain why most users don't have it.

My clock in the indicator bar also shows time in seconds.