memory leak in compiz when using places, dashboard, and exposing launcher icons with multiple quicklists

Bug #720446 reported by Doug McMahon
This bug affects 227 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
System Load Indicator
Fix Released
Undecided
Unassigned
Unity
Fix Released
Critical
Neil J. Patel
unity (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
High
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: compiz

Was testing some stuff with the places. (application and files) and dash for a period of time, happened to notice memory use 9actual) was abnormally high.
Did a restart to clear, every use of either raises mem . in a manner not expected or proper?
Attached is pidstat on compiz, each large increase in a use of one of the three, about 3 times on each
(the last use crashed compiz which at this point was not unexpected.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: compiz 1:0.9.2.1+glibmainloop4-0ubuntu11
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-3.30-generic 2.6.38-rc4
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-3-generic i686
Architecture: i386
DRM.card0.VGA.1:
 status: disconnected
 enabled: disabled
 dpms: Off
 modes:
 edid-base64:
Date: Wed Feb 16 18:20:21 2011
DistUpgraded: Fresh install
DistroCodename: natty
DistroVariant: ubuntu
DkmsStatus:

GraphicsCard: Subsystem: Device [19f1:1fa4]
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20110130)
MachineType: alienware alienware
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-3-generic root=UUID=a8f09f16-bb0f-4fe6-8b3a-30733b0b2ba8 ro
SourcePackage: compiz
dmi.bios.date: 01/29/2004
dmi.bios.vendor: Intel Corp.
dmi.bios.version: BZ87510A.86A.0091.P21.0401291113
dmi.board.name: D875PBZ
dmi.board.vendor: Intel Corporation
dmi.board.version: AAC26680-205
dmi.chassis.type: 2
dmi.chassis.vendor: alienware
dmi.chassis.version: alienware
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnIntelCorp.:bvrBZ87510A.86A.0091.P21.0401291113:bd01/29/2004:svnalienware:pnalienware:pvr:rvnIntelCorporation:rnD875PBZ:rvrAAC26680-205:cvnalienware:ct2:cvralienware:
dmi.product.name: alienware
dmi.sys.vendor: alienware
version.compiz: compiz 1:0.9.2.1+glibmainloop4-0ubuntu11
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.23-1ubuntu3
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 7.10-1ubuntu2
version.xserver-xorg: xserver-xorg 1:7.6~3ubuntu4
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati N/A
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel N/A
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:0.0.16+git20110107+b795ca6e-0ubuntu4

Related branches

Revision history for this message
Doug McMahon (mc3man) wrote :
tags: added: compiz-0.9
affects: compiz (Ubuntu) → unity (Ubuntu)
Revision history for this message
Doug McMahon (mc3man) wrote :

With the latest set of updates thru 02/17 seems to have become a non factor, am considering this invalid ATM

Revision history for this message
Neil J. Patel (njpatel) wrote :

There were still some heavy mem leaks inside the dash that I cleaned up yesterday, so I'm going to target for this week (as I'm continuing to do memory tuning work and linking my branch).

Changed in unity:
assignee: nobody → Neil J. Patel (njpatel)
importance: Undecided → Critical
milestone: none → 3.4.6
status: New → In Progress
Revision history for this message
Doug McMahon (mc3man) wrote :

I marked invalid, "nonfactor", due to the amount 'lost' seemed relatively small (as compared to last time dash leaked), though is still obviously present.
Also see small amount thru the places, but just when doing searches.
The other factor is still can't do extended use of any of the 3 before compiz crashes anyway (seemed to limited here to about 12 -20 uses before crash
will certainly check out the next compiz, ect. upgrades

Revision history for this message
Doug McMahon (mc3man) wrote :

You may also want to look at unity-panel-service at some point (1+MB per use

Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
status: New → In Progress
Neil J. Patel (njpatel)
Changed in unity:
status: In Progress → Fix Committed
Changed in unity:
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Vadim Peretokin (vperetokin) wrote :

I have reason to believe that this is still an issue. I used Dash for a bit, and the memory usage grew on the same operations. 10mins later, it didn't size back down either (but grew to 120mb).

Revision history for this message
Vadim Peretokin (vperetokin) wrote :

I have reason to believe that this is still an issue. I used Dash for a bit, and the memory usage grew on the same operations. 10mins later, it didn't size back down either (but grew to 120mb).

Revision history for this message
Doug McMahon (mc3man) wrote :

It does seem to have returned with a bit more significance though would like to note do see a difference between an older updated install and a fresh 04/08 install which behaves better

Also I'm not sure that the increase of RSS when INITIALLY using the various is not unexpected - dash, .places, Alt+F2, searches in these, the dropdowns, ect. and possibly the global menu ( a bump of about 30 -40 %), seems reasonable that it would

After that though there still appears to be a small per use increase that can build over time, though have not logged long enough to see if it 'caps out' or will continue ad infinitum

Changed in unity:
status: Fix Released → New
Changed in unity:
status: New → In Progress
Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → High
Revision history for this message
Doug McMahon (mc3man) wrote :

Also to note that use increases over time with no activity at all, maybe about 8MB per hr YMMV

Revision history for this message
VinDSL (perfect-pecker) wrote :

Sorry for being late to the party... :)

I'm a Conky user (simple analysis program). Conky auto-starts at login, and I constantly monitor its output.

I've been aware of a significant mem leak in Unity, since I first installed Natty, but was unaware of this bug report, until today.

Luckily, I take frequent screenshots, so it was an easy matter to look back through my portfolio for mem usage.

Here are some representative readings of Compiz usage, from 18-Feb (first install) through 9-Apr (today):

2 min 57 sec = 61.7 M
1 hr 53 min = 103 M
2 hr 48 min = 146 M
3 hr 10 min = 149 M
4 hr 31 min = 182 M

This is a fair sampling, and clearly demonstrates (based on the screenshot dates) that the mem leak has been consistent and ever-present from the start.

As Doug McMahon noted, it increases over time, regardless of user activity.

I'll subscribe to this bug report, and watch it closely. If/when change(s) occur, I'll report back.

Thanks!

Revision history for this message
unikuser (unikuser) wrote :

Memory usage for me is increasing at a rate of 1MB/min without any usage at all.

ps auxw ; 6th column is RSS

unik 9962 6.8 2.4 632284 93796 pts/0 Sl 04:04 1:33 compiz
unik 9962 6.7 2.4 633380 94904 pts/0 Sl 04:04 1:36 compiz
unik 9962 6.7 2.4 633884 95424 pts/0 Sl 04:04 1:40 compiz
unik 9962 6.7 2.5 634792 96296 pts/0 Sl 04:04 1:44 compiz
unik 9962 6.7 2.5 635712 97220 pts/0 Sl 04:04 1:47 compiz
unik 9962 6.7 2.5 636484 98216 pts/0 Sl 04:04 1:52 compiz
unik 9962 6.7 2.5 637044 99052 pts/0 Sl 04:04 1:56 compiz
unik 9962 6.8 2.5 637508 99716 pts/0 Sl 04:04 2:02 compiz
unik 9962 7.0 2.6 638164 100432 pts/0 Sl 04:04 2:09 compiz
unik 9962 7.1 2.6 638524 101888 pts/0 Rl 04:04 2:15 compiz
unik 9962 7.2 2.6 638584 102444 pts/0 Sl 04:04 2:22 compiz
unik 9962 7.2 2.6 638524 103512 pts/0 Sl 04:04 2:27 compiz
unik 9962 7.3 2.7 638836 104352 pts/0 Sl 04:04 2:33 compiz
unik 9962 7.4 2.7 638992 104980 pts/0 Sl 04:04 2:38 compiz
unik 9962 7.5 2.7 639328 105868 pts/0 Sl 04:04 2:46 compiz

Revision history for this message
graingert (tagrain) wrote :

In comparison ubuntu classic compiz uses 17-23MiB of ram and with unity uses 108-240MiB of ram

Revision history for this message
Neil J. Patel (njpatel) wrote :

Just to update, we've fixed a bunch of different leaks, however there are a few that we couldn't make for this release. We'll be working on them this week and will strive to have them in the beta release or, worst case, as an update as soon as the repos open again. Thanks for all the feedback, it's been very helpful!

Changed in unity:
milestone: 3.4.6 → none
Revision history for this message
ccaaatt (ccaaatt) wrote :

http://wayland.freedesktop.org/building.html :
"
cairo-gl
The Wayland clients can render using cairo-gl, but fall back to software when cairo-gl is not available.
"

So cairo (1.10.2-2ubuntu2) may didn't broken wayland, I guest.

Revision history for this message
ccaaatt (ccaaatt) wrote :

http://wayland.freedesktop.org/building.html :
"
cairo-gl
The Wayland clients can render using cairo-gl, but fall back to software when cairo-gl is not available.
"

So cairo (1.10.2-2ubuntu2) may didn't break wayland, I guess

Revision history for this message
ccaaatt (ccaaatt) wrote :

forgive me, wrong place. this is about another bug

Revision history for this message
Nur Kholis M (kholis) wrote :

It's still happen on beta2. Compiz memory increase when opening unity dash. Just like in Vadim Peretokin video.

Revision history for this message
chef (adotei) wrote :

Still memory leaking in 11.04 final release, again as in Vadim Peretokin's video.

Revision history for this message
Anshul Jain (anshulajain) wrote :

I'm facing the same problem as the OP. Memory usage for Compiz keeps rising when dash is being opened.

Revision history for this message
suliman saadi (sulimansaadi) wrote :

i'm affected too. in several hours compiz jump from using 45mb to 500mb.

Revision history for this message
On-The-Fly (onthefly) wrote :

My freshly installed Natty seems to have the bug too. Compiz is consuming 613 MB of RAM at the moment and it is continously growing. I have two monitors connected and no proprietary driver installed.

Revision history for this message
Mark Smulders (ms-tbwb) wrote :

I'm also affected by compiz memory problems. Upgraded Ubuntu from 10.10 to 11.04 last monday.
After almost 2 days uptime, memory usage is :

$ ps auxw |grep compiz
ms 1593 2.6 23.0 1745332 933976 ? Sl May02 73:04 compiz

Ouch!!

$ lspci |grep -i nvid
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G98M [Quadro NVS 160M] (rev a1)

I will provide any system information or perform any tests nescessary for you to fix this.
Cheers mates.

Revision history for this message
majesty (majesty-nashemisto) wrote :

I confirm, at that release with updates after 10 hrs uptime compiz memory takes near 800 mb.

Revision history for this message
Dennis Kruyt (dennis-kruyt) wrote :

Can confirm this bug, after a couple of days compix takes more then 50% mem usage.

Revision history for this message
Harald (h-van-der-laan) wrote :

Can also confirm this bug.

$ dpkg -l unity
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-====================================-====================================-========================================================================================
ii unity 3.8.12-0ubuntu1 Interface designed for efficiency of space and interaction.

$ uptime
13:47:28 up 33 min, 3 users, load average: 0.13, 0.10, 0.12

$ ps auxw | grep compiz
1000 1745 3.2 1.9 589912 78956 ? Sl 13:15 1:03 compiz

Revision history for this message
skalka (skalka) wrote :

I post two screenshot of my desktop, please note time and memory consumption of Compiz. Laptop has been idle almost all the time during these two hours. I run Natty with Unity, my graphic card is an Nvidia GeForce 8400M GS.

Revision history for this message
skalka (skalka) wrote :
Revision history for this message
vasja (vasja-markic) wrote :

Yes, I confirm that issue too.
The increasing is 1MB in 10 sec!!! I disabled Conky - no changes at all.
I run also Natty with Unity, with Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller.

Revision history for this message
Anas (anas-rana) wrote :

I can confirm, running a clean install of Natty with Unity.

In fact after leaving my laptop running over night I had 1.9GB memory usage by compiz! Laptop became almost unusable, couldn't even slect to restart it was too slow.
If you restart compiz memory usage goes back to a more normal but then starts climbing again.

Revision history for this message
r00tuk (r00tuk) wrote :

Hi

I am also experiencing the same problems. Desktop become unstable after 8 hours or so. Not sure if more information is required or previous posters have provided everything you need?

Thanks

Revision history for this message
Vadász Zoltán B. (vadasz-zoltan) wrote :

Hi,

Confirmed on a laptop dist-updated from maverick last night.

dpkg -l unity; dpkg -l compiz;
ii unity 3.8.12-0ubuntu1 Interface designed for efficiency of space and interaction.
ii compiz 1:0.9.4+bzr20110415-0ubuntu2 OpenGL window and compositing manager

uptime;
16:43:08 up 6:47, 3 users, load average: 0.04, 0.35, 0.60

ps auxw | grep compiz
zvadasz 15353 6.4 21.9 1863556 888332 ? Sl 12:10 17:36 compiz

bye.

Revision history for this message
Jan Nekvasil (jan-nekvasil) wrote :

I can confirm this on three different hosts with three different graphics adapters: Radeon HD 3400, NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS and Intel 82G33/G31 Express. The best workaround so far was to bind the command "unity --replace" to Ctrl+Alt+U and hit this combo whenever things go ugly.

Revision history for this message
Cas (calumlind) wrote :

People please stop posting me too comments, unless it is relevant to fixing the bug, instead simply add yourself to the "Does this bug affect you?" at the top of the page.

@Jan Nekvasil: Simply use "unity" rather than "unity --replace" and I think you mean "Alt-F2" to open Dash Run mode rather than Ctrl+Alt+U.

Revision history for this message
Vadász Zoltán B. (vadasz-zoltan) wrote :

Can confirm on a laptop dist-upgraded last night from maverick to natty.
In every 3-4 seconds memory usage is increased with the amount of several hundred KB even if nothing is done after login. The estimation of 1MB in 10 seconds applies to my environment too.

If more info/log/statistics needed please ask for it.

Revision history for this message
skalka (skalka) wrote :

Memory leak doesn't seem to happen on Ubuntu live version. I've tried to boot a live Natty on a notebook with a Intel graphic chip and after one hour compiz's memory consumption was still around 30 MiB. I don't know if this can help.

Revision history for this message
Dimitris Papageorgiou (papageorgioud) wrote :

If you're experiencing this, try turning off any extra indicator applets you have installed. In my case indicator-multiload and indicator-sensors were the cause.

Revision history for this message
Tal Liron (emblem-parade) wrote :

I'll add that I use the same indicators in Unity and Gnome Classic with Compiz, and the memory leak does not seem to happening in the latter case. If it is something with the indicators, then it's specific to Unity.

Any word from the devs on clues for this issue? Even a workaround would be much appreciated. This is a serious problem on a few different machines of mine with very different hardware and configurations. :(

Revision history for this message
Nikke (nmellegard) wrote :

I can confirm @Dimitris Papageorgiou workaround in #36.

Removed indicator-multiload and now Compiz does not seem to leak (to the same extent) any more.

Revision history for this message
paranoid (paranoidalex) wrote :

Removing indicator-multiload works for me as well.

Revision history for this message
Mark Smulders (ms-tbwb) wrote :

I do not have indicator-multiload active, but do experience the mem leakage

cheers

Revision history for this message
Saed Matos (chitenga) wrote :

I also do not have indicator-multiload and also experience the leak.

Cheers.

Revision history for this message
Robert Horswell (r-j-horswell) wrote :

I did have indicator-multiload active. Removing it has stopped the leak from increasing at a rate of 1MiB/s and made my computer usable again. There does still seem to be some sort of leak, but the usage has only reached 63MiB and I've been running for about 3 or 4 hours. (The mem usage when logging in starts at about 23MiB or so...)

I did notice that the problem did not occur when running Classic Gnome, even with indicator-multiload running. Just in Unity...

Revision history for this message
Doug McMahon (mc3man) wrote :

If one is having memory issues with some indicator-<whatever> - then maybe start filing a bug against the specific indicator package
I would not doubt that a memory issue would also be seen when checking the whatever indicator's process

Revision history for this message
Michael Hofmann (mh21) wrote :

The main hack that indicator-multiload uses is that it generates a new icon for each refresh (in a temporary directory on a ramdisk, and there are only 2 icons existing at the same time) . So maybe somewhere in the dash there is an icon cache that keeps growing?

Michael Hofmann (mh21)
Changed in indicator-multiload:
status: New → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Doug McMahon (mc3man) wrote :

Unless expanded this bug is about what's titled, not what indicators and or their supporting packages do (there ar e other add-on indicators that have or cause issues memory wise

As far as indicator-multiload:, it clearly causes a memory increase in compiz of about 1MB/min, so have filed directly against that package
Whether that should be thrown back at compiz/unity I wouldn't know .... though additional comments concerning indicator-multiload should go there for the moment
bug #779717

Revision history for this message
BehzadSh (behzadsh) wrote :

1.5GB @ 5h

Revision history for this message
Leonardo (rnalrd) wrote :

After startup it takes about 70-80MB of RAM. Now my compiz process chews ~250MB after about 5 days of uptime.
This never happened with Maverick. I didn't check compiz memory usage with Ubuntu Classic desktop on Natty.

Revision history for this message
vasja (vasja-markic) wrote :

Ok, removed the indicator-multiload, the leak stopped to 33MB (Compiz) and it doesn't seem to increase any more.

Revision history for this message
Frank Zimmerman (pproph) wrote :

I also saw a rapid rise in memory usage with compiz on an update from 10.10 to 11.04 on two different machines (both with Nvidia 8400GS).

So I tried a fresh, clean install on one of these computers. It seemed fine for the first day, but the next day compiz was at 2GB memory usage.

I was also using indicator-multiload and terminated it. This stopped the constant steady rise in compiz memory usage, but did not stop all memory increase.

Now, with the System Monitor open and Compiz highlighted, I can bring up either Dash (Super key), Alt-F2, or Apps (Super-a) and watch the Compiz memory increase as I open and close these launchers. It goes up roughly 1MB per open/close.

So I think that it is more than just the multiload indicator...that perhaps is something that shows up the problem more readily, but the problem is deeper and remains.

Revision history for this message
Hi^gh^Life (cesiel1990) wrote :

Like Zimmerman above, I'm also having this issue using the Nvidia 8400GS.

Revision history for this message
Leonardo (rnalrd) wrote :

A pidstat output of compiz process over a period of 24h:

02:54:11 PM PID minflt/s majflt/s VSZ RSS %MEM Command
03:54:11 PM 3190 10.69 0.00 1047856 257124 6.55 compiz
04:54:11 PM 3190 9.77 0.00 1053400 256520 6.53 compiz
05:54:11 PM 3190 4.08 0.00 1059788 257572 6.56 compiz
06:54:11 PM 3190 5.31 0.00 1059588 274760 7.00 compiz
07:54:11 PM 3190 4.21 0.00 1059700 274820 7.00 compiz
08:54:11 PM 3190 4.29 0.00 1060268 275632 7.02 compiz
09:54:11 PM 3190 1.89 0.00 1060268 281756 7.18 compiz
10:54:11 PM 3190 0.61 0.00 1060268 290468 7.40 compiz
11:54:11 PM 3190 0.61 0.00 1060268 299180 7.62 compiz
12:54:11 AM 3190 0.61 0.00 1060268 308156 7.85 compiz
01:54:11 AM 3190 0.61 0.00 1060268 316868 8.07 compiz
02:54:11 AM 3190 0.61 0.00 1125804 325580 8.29 compiz
03:54:11 AM 3190 0.61 0.00 1125804 334292 8.52 compiz
04:54:11 AM 3190 0.61 0.00 1125804 343268 8.74 compiz
05:54:11 AM 3190 0.61 0.00 1125804 351980 8.97 compiz
06:54:11 AM 3190 11.09 0.00 1257648 486452 12.39 compiz
07:54:13 AM 3190 4.29 0.00 1256656 485836 12.38 compiz
08:54:13 AM 3190 8.23 0.01 1263588 487412 12.42 compiz
09:54:13 AM 3190 7.84 0.00 1253944 487360 12.42 compiz
10:54:13 AM 3190 9.01 0.00 1245332 489408 12.47 compiz
11:54:13 AM 3190 7.47 0.00 1246644 489780 12.48 compiz
12:54:13 PM 3190 4.35 0.00 1245828 490040 12.48 compiz

12:54:13 PM PID minflt/s majflt/s VSZ RSS %MEM Command
01:54:13 PM 3190 11.20 0.00 1256600 490980 12.51 compiz
02:54:13 PM 3190 8.28 0.00 1263452 490948 12.51 compiz
Average: 3190 4.87 0.00 1143119 368591 9.39 compiz

Revision history for this message
vak (khamenya) wrote :

Why isn't this awesome bug shown as burning?

Revision history for this message
Dennis Kruyt (dennis-kruyt) wrote :

And what is the status of a patch? Ubuntu is promoting unity bug I cant run it normaly with this bug, I am now running classic.

Revision history for this message
Hi^gh^Life (cesiel1990) wrote :

Not sure if this helps anyone, but I had a system load indicator installed in the top bar (It was just like the old gnome system load applet). I removed it and my compiz memory leak issue seems to have disappeared.

Revision history for this message
bayo opadeyi (bayokrapht) wrote :

I noticed the same thing after removing the system load indicator I had running. The memory leak seems to have been plugged.

Revision history for this message
BehzadSh (behzadsh) wrote :

After removing System Load indicator, compiz memory leak problem seems to be solved, but memory usage still growing (but less than before). I think main problem is not solved yet!

Revision history for this message
David (unity-davidsaylor) wrote :

I am seeing unity-window-decorator memory usage grow in excess of 2GB physical and 5GB virtual. As a work around, I am periodically running \usr\bin\unity-window-decorator --replace to replace the running instance with a new instance. I generally don't search my files/folders but do browse places and leave the browse windows open for days or weeks at a time. I am using ubuntu 11.04 - natty and the ATI proprietary drivers (Driver Packaging Version 8.84.6-110324a-116088C-ATI - 2D Driver Version 8.84.60 - RandR Version 1.3 - OpenGL Provider ATI Technologies Inc. - OpenGL Renderer ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics - OpenGL Version 3.3.10665) with an ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics card - BIOS Date 2/12/08,02:39:27 Version 010.073.000.002.000000.

-David

Revision history for this message
David (unity-davidsaylor) wrote :

BTW, Unity reports version as 3.8.12.

Revision history for this message
Pasi Tarhonen (pasi-tarhonen) wrote :

I can confirm Frank Zimmerman notice that Compiz -memory increases just by clicking continuously the Unity Dash -icon on left upper corner (to open/close/open/close... the dash).

The rate is about 10 clicks per 1 MB on my Acer AOD250 (screen resolution is 1024x600, Intel Atom N280 CPU with Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller). So it takes some time of normal usage to end up trouble with this memory leak.

Revision history for this message
Mark Smulders (ms-tbwb) wrote :

Update : disabling indicator-sysmonitor solves the biggest problem for me.

It's quite a large 'coincidence' imho, users reporting different indicator apps causing the same problematic memory issues. Perhaps something in compiz that handles the indicators causing something ... ??

Revision history for this message
Hi^gh^Life (cesiel1990) wrote :

It seems to me that whatever refreshes that top bar is causing the compiz leak. For instance if I open or close the file or edit menu for a program the compiz memory usage goes up. The leak was bad with the system indicator, and the system indicator refreshes a lot..

Doug McMahon (mc3man)
summary: - possible memory leak in compiz when using places, dashboard
+ memory leak in compiz when using places, dashboard, and exposing
+ launcher icons with multiple quicklists
Revision history for this message
Artem Medeu (artem-medeu) wrote :

I can confirm this issue. Today I figured that compiz takes 1.5Gb of ram on my work machine. Opening dash (by pressing super btn) encreases memory usage for about 200-600Kb.

Revision history for this message
Claus Lensbøl (cmol) wrote :

I can confirm this to. I have indicator-multiload installed also, however, I recalled the issue being there before I installed it.

Revision history for this message
fgr (f-gritsch) wrote :

same issue (but dont now what 'places' are)
and I don't have a nvidia, my laptop has a ATI card: 02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M96 [Mobility Radeon HD 4650]

Revision history for this message
fgr (f-gritsch) wrote :

INFO: with 'System Load Indicator 0.1' from Michael Hofmann <mh21 (a) mh21.de> you can see the compiz ram usage grow every 5 sec 0,2 MiB.

Revision history for this message
Jimmy Merrild Krag (beruic) wrote :

Expo makes it rise as wel

Revision history for this message
Jimmy Merrild Krag (beruic) wrote :

Sorry, after revising, I don't think it's expo that triggers it.

Revision history for this message
Jimmy Merrild Krag (beruic) wrote :

I can confirm #65

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Jimmy Merrild Krag (beruic) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Omer Akram (om26er) wrote :

For the system load indicator I have reported bug 786425

Revision history for this message
Doug McMahon (mc3man) wrote :

Omar - you may wish to see if this a dup of the one you just reported, I tried splitting it out of here a bit ago
bug 779717

Revision history for this message
Derek Monner (dmonner) wrote :

Over in #779717 (comment #18), Michael Hofmann has a patch for Unity that seems to fix the memory leak that is so noticeable when indicator-multiload or system load indicator are running.

Revision history for this message
kaij74 (kaij74) wrote :

I doesn't fix dash leak/cache.

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GonzO (gonzo) wrote :

Michael Hofmann's patch is actually pretty amazing. I hope it gets accepted into Unity proper, both for Natty and upstream.

I've been running for hours, and my Compiz memory is ~47mb. That's as low as its ever been.

There is still a leak using Lenses and the Dash. It isn't all that big, but needs to be addressed (Compiz STARTED life this session at 25mb.)

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C (cinyc-s) wrote :

Makes using Unity on notebooks with 1Gb of RAM very difficult. Seeing as this has been open since February, I think it makes sense to ask whether this will be closed before the next release of Ubuntu? Or should I just install Fedora on my notebook instead, if I want a nice interface?

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Muhammad Nabil (ghogaru) wrote :

Unity is really slow right now... Unity team, please update!!

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Juan Carlos (arareka-ha) wrote :

Hi, I have a HP Probook 4525s, ATI Mobility RadeonTM HD 4250. First I installed FGLRX driver and have this bug, compiz start with 40 Mb and after some work go to 1 Gb or more...
Now I'm using the Open source driver, and compiz use at startup 25/26 Mb, and maximum 50/60 with many windows open.

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Andreas Maninakis (amaninak) wrote :

I don't notice any memory leaks since the last unity update about 2 days ago. My computer is running for over two days and compiz is using <100 MB of RAM.

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Frank Zimmerman (pproph) wrote :

Andreas,

Wish I could say the same...I'm still seeing a slow but steady creep in memory on the Compiz process, and opening and closing Dash (with the Super key, pressed repeatedly) shows a regular climb of about 0.5mb per open/close. This is on a relatively new computer (Phenom Quad, 4GB Ram) with Nvidia 8400GS PCIe card.

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Leonardo (rnalrd) wrote :

I confirm Frank comment. Opening and closing dash repeatedly makes compiz mem usage go up. In my case is about 0.[2|3]MB per open/close. I'm using radeon driver from git.

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Alex Yurchenko (ayurchen) wrote :

Well, I have compiz leaking without actually touching anything in the GUI session, just being logged in. In the last 12 hours compiz memory usage grew from 751M/159M VIRT/RES to 758M/180M. This is without touching keyboard or mouse, screen blanked. A weather and system monitor (text based) indicators are running - probably the only redrawing applications. Compiz is the only process that shows memory usage growth.

Shortly after boot compiz memory usage was around 150M/62M.

Hardware is Core i5 2400 with integrated graphics, stock driver that comes with Ubuntu 11.04.

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cmat (cmat555) wrote :

Seems to be a pretty big problem given my PC doesn't have a lot of RAM. I'm currently using a GeForce 460 with the proprietary driver. Every time I open the dash the RAM usage of Compiz raises about 0.3 MBs and holds until I shutdown the PC.

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Timothy Alexander (dragonfyre13) wrote :

@#81

Seems that the patch Michael submitted made it into mainline (that's my guess) which fixes a pixbuf issue, (constant increase without use) but that there's outstanding issues with lenses, opening the dash, and various other scenarios, which seem to all require use of the system. A constant increase without any usage indicates that maybe the pixbuf stuff wasn't actually resolved.

Can you try using the multiload PPA from bug 779717 and report back if your constant increase issue is resolved in that case? The PPA has a patched version of unity that should have been merged into mainline now, but despite reports since 6/9 that things have improved, I haven't seen an indication that this patch was merged.

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asdf (asdf2468-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

I ran another log, which has a pretty interesting result. I didn't use my computer at all yesterday while the log was running, it was idle all the time. Its memory usage increased over time, from about 26MB when I left it, to about 521M when I came back. That is a huge increase by itself, for a system that is not being used.

But the really interesting part comes when I logged in to my computer, at 09:46:35 in the log. Memory usage suddenly jumped from about 521MB to about 1.3GB! And it also had 3715 "minflt/s" (minor page faults per second? I'm not sure what this is).

There is definitely something very, very much broken in Compiz.

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Francois Chenais (francois-chenais) wrote :

Same experience for me

  $ ps auxwf |grep compiz$
  user 3594 0.4 22.8 1992436 1400264 ? Sl Jul31 36:00 \_ compiz

Version: 11.04 natty

ii unity 3.8.16-0ubuntu1~natty1
ii compiz 1:0.9.4+bzr20110606-0ubuntu1~natty2

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Neil J. Patel (njpatel) wrote :

Hi, we've landed a bunch of memory leak fixes this week (and the past few weeks) in both the dash and across Unity. I believe that this bug can now be closed in favour of more specific bugs with tests against specific areas (i.e. open the quicklist five times, compiz leaks 5MB), which is how this started off but has kind of become a catch-all since then.

Changed in unity:
status: In Progress → Fix Committed
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Omer Akram (om26er) wrote :

Closing as fixed per last comment and due to the fact there are alot of memory leaks getting fixed every week.

Changed in unity:
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
status: In Progress → Fix Released
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Brad Lucier (lucier) wrote :

This is still broken as of today, December 7, 2011, in 11.10

Why not use this bug for tracking unity memory leaks? I've participated a lot in gcc bugzilla, and in my experience I don't see the reasoning behind closing a bug that is of "critical" and/or "high" importance when the problem still exists.

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Brad Lucier (lucier) wrote :

I forgot to put the output of ps:

lucier 1778 0.5 32.4 3076104 2656524 ? Sl Nov28 69:25 /usr/lib/unity/unity-panel-service

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sds (sds-gnu) wrote :

at virt=808m rss=121m compiz is still the biggest hog on my box, outstripping emacs and chrome.

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Savannah King Norton (sln45) wrote :

Love Unity, hate Compiz. Isn't Compiz only handling the indicators and some other small things? Can it not be replaced? I've lost 2 hours of battery life to this, even in Unity2d. Switching back to gnome 2 until this is resolved.

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fgr (f-gritsch) wrote :

@spacklecrisp: dont think that unity2d uses compiz. It is based on qt. Nop?

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Roland (roland1979) wrote :

Please re-open this bug. It is not fixed as of today. I need to do "compiz --replace &" every 5 to 7 days to keep my workstation usable.

Just a few mins ago my compiz was at 2,2GB and unity was "unusable". The window content (app) itself is doing fine (unless you move/switch to another or do anything else with them).

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Jim Rorie (jfrorie) wrote :

Agreed. Same issue. I had to reset because of swap thrashing for about 40 min. And I've got 4GB. I'm betting people with less memory are switching to fedora. ;(

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Roland (roland1979) wrote :

The bad thing about this isn't necessarily that compiz leaks memory, but you can basically watch your desktop getting slower and slower. If I reboot Ubuntu/Unity after a week, this feels like a new machine for me.

The next day compiz seems to iterate over more objects than it needs to already. This gets worse every day. First I thought the "lagginess" is due to swapping activity, but it isn't. This is pure userspace CPU load by compiz, slowing down all activities regarding the desktop and its windowing.

If you keep your actions within a window, everything is fine.

I guess we should create a new bug regarding this, .. it doesn't look like this is being reopened.

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Roland (roland1979) wrote :

@Jim Rorie: Do you have indicator-multiload running? I do .. have a look at https://bugs.launchpad.net/indicator-multiload/+bug/779717

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paulf (paulf-linux-launchpad) wrote :

Even without indicator-multiload running i still get a steady leak. Googling indicates that x64 systems are maybe affected more.

if i have a session of system monitor open i can simply open the dash and work with the filters to see compiz increase in size.

in the dash showing all leaks between 1 - 6mb which doesnt seem to be released. closing it and reopening it and showing all will repeatably leak a chunk.

another observation is that opening application menu's on the panel seems to get slower as this leak progresses. spotify seems particularly bad.

my compiz stuff is 1:0.9.6+bzr20110929-0ubuntu6.1
unity is 4.28.0-0ubuntu2
unity2d is 4.12.0-0ubuntu1.1

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Tiger (dzh-1121-d) wrote :

Yes, I confirm that issue too.

I'm using Ubuntu 12.04

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Marjancek (marjancek) wrote :

I turn off my computer on weekends.
On Wednesday morning I have indicator-multiload already sucking almost 2Gb.

My machine is up-to-date as of Friday 24 - indicator-multiload (0.2-0ubuntu1)

This has not been updated since August 2011?

Please, re-open this bug.

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Pavel Šefránek (pavelsefranek) wrote :

I can confirm this too. After 4 days of using compiz it took about 700 MB of RSS memory (that makes it the biggest memory consumer on my 12.04 desktop). It's really annoying bug that causes my system swapping a lot (I have 2 GB RAM installed).

It can be temporarily solved by executing "unity --replace" command. After this the Compiz uses only about 60 MB of RSS.

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Huart (robin-huart) wrote :

Oops, sorry I miss clicked. :-/

Changed in indicator-multiload:
status: Invalid → Fix Released
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Mark Lanctot (mark-lanctot) wrote :

Same here with indicator-multiload 0.2-0ubuntu2. I'm on Ubuntu 12.10 64-bit with 4 GB of RAM.

I left my computer on over the holidays. About midway through I noticed I was using 3 GB of swap. Didn't investigate, restarted.

Today I was using swap again and noticed indicator-multiload was the heaviest memory user at 1.1 GB. Shut down indicator-multiload and it's fine when started again, currently at 11.6 MB. However it's rising by about 1 MB every 2 or 3 seconds.

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Jan Nekvasil (jan-nekvasil) wrote :

I have the exactly same experience with indicator-multiload - sometimes it goes completely crazy for no obvious reason and eats up all memory - but this has nothig to do with possible leak in compiz, I suppose.

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