X11 eating memory like crazy

razr · n00b Joined: 02 Apr 2003 Posts: 3

Hello!

This question has bugged me for some time now. X seems to be swallowing up my memory progressively from the moment I start it. On average it takes around 6 days for X11 to eat so much memory that the system becomes quite unusable, and I am forced to restart Xfree.

When I start X it hardly uses any RAM at all (some 20 + 15 megs). Top's output shows 17 megs for size and 82 megs for RSS after 3 days of uptime. It will hit around 25 and 120 respectively in 5 more days. Yes, I know, AGP graphics memory is added to that too, but nevertheless, X seems to eat more and more with every passing day. Even when I dont have any apps running X still will have swallowed loads of RAM.

This problem has stayed with me through different distributions, and different versions of X as well as kernel. Lowering X's priority didn't help much.

Basically, I am wondering, if there is the way to make X give up all the stuff it caches? OK, some people tell me that it's alright for apps to eat all available RAM, and release it when needed. I however haven't noticed X to be giving back much of the stuff it has taken.

All in all - any memory management tricks are welcome. Thanks!

-Razr

the system:
Xfree 4.2.1-r2
256 MB RAM
95 + 95 MB swap (on different physical harddrives)
Riva TNT AGP 16MB, aperture size set to 16 megs
Nvidia drivers 1.0.3123
Kernel 2.4.19-xfs-r

P.S. Yes, more RAM would be one solution

dwerg · Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2003 9:47 pm Post subject:

This looks like a memory leak. The fact that you've had this all the time and on different distributions suggests it's caused by a stable factor: maybe your nvidia drivers? This is probably just caused by bad programming and you can't do anything about it except restart X now and then.

ebrostig · Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2003 12:38 am Post subject:

I maybe a good idea to upgrade to Xfree 4.3.0 and to the latest Nvidia drivers. They just released a new version and there are several threads about the driver in this Forum.

I agree with the previous poster that this is probably a memory leak.

Erik
_________________
'Yes, Firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'

Matje · Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2003 12:49 pm Post subject:

I would suggest upgrading to the nvidia 43xx drivers, I have noticed a lot of improvement in memory usage after I did that.
_________________
Life is like a box of chocolates... Before you know it, it's empty...

The Khan Artist · Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2003 3:06 pm Post subject:

Me as well, the new drivers fixed all of my crashing problems. Now if only I had hot-swappable drive bays, I'd never have to reboot.

pilla · Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2003 7:31 pm Post subject:

What CFLAGS are you using?
_________________
"I'm just very selective about the reality I choose to accept." -- Calvin