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Date:      Fri, 16 Jan 2004 08:20:14 -0600
From:      Jonathan Fosburgh <jonathan@fosburgh.org>
To:        freebsd-x11@freebsd.org
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Possible memory leak in XFree86
Message-ID:  <200401160820.19794.jonathan@fosburgh.org>

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I am cross-posting this to -current, since the problem is occuring in that=
=20
environment.

I first noticed this as far back as 5.0-RELEASE, but I had chalked it up to=
=20
being hardware-related, for reasons I shall get into shortly.  The problem=
=20
has persisted throught XFree86 4.3.x (and through the most current snapshot=
=20
available in the ports).  I am also running KDE 3.x (3.1.x and now 3.2=20
BETA2).  I am running -CURRENT (updated within the past couple of weeks) on=
 a=20
Pentium III-600mHz with 383MB (from dmesg) RAM.  Originally, I had an nvidi=
a=20
Riva TNT2 video card.  For a brief time I used the nvidia drivers, but thos=
e=20
were so unstable I never found out if this particular problem was=20
reproduceable with them. I now have an ATI Radeon 9200 and I see the same=20
things. =20

What is happening is that the X server slowly allocates more memory until a=
ll=20
physical RAM and page space are allocated, and the pager starts killing off=
=20
processes, eventually killing the X server.  This seems to screw up syscons=
=20
as well, and  I wind up having to reboot to get my text consoles back.  =20
Things have gotten slightly better of late, sometimes the memory is freed a=
nd=20
the XFree86 process might go from say 400+MB (according to top) down to a=20
little less then 200MB, which appears to be normal for the Radeon using DRI=
=2E =20
But this is not always the case.  When I come in in the mornings I either=20
find my system very low on page space, or if I am gone for a couple of days=
 I=20
will generally find that X has been killed.  I run screensavers and have DP=
MS=20
set up to send the monitor to power-save mode. I have reduced my screensave=
r=20
to just blanking the screen, but still to no avail.  This morning, I came i=
n=20
(after having been out yesterday) to find that X had been killed after=20
running out of page space.

Now, here is why I initially thought it was hardware related (that is, in t=
he=20
nvidia driver for XFree86): at home I have a Pentium III-600 with about the=
=20
same amount of memory, running XFree86 4.3.x, KDE 3.1.x, screensavers, DPMS=
,=20
etc.  The differences are that at home I have an SiS ViRGE video card=20
(incidentally, PCI versus AGP for work), and I am tracking -STABLE there. =
=20
Only every once in awhile do I run out of page space at home, but my paging=
=20
space is undersized there, whereas at work it is set to the recommended siz=
e=20
from when I did the install, 753MB.=20

Where I am at now is trying to figure out where the memory is going, and ho=
w=20
to prevent it. :) Can anyone help me diagnose this?
=2D --=20
Jonathan Fosburgh
AIX and Storage Administrator
UT MD Anderson Cancer Center
Houston, TX
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