Bug 2590

Created attachment 1956 [details]
server log

I'm pasting this from bug 82073 at bugs.gentoo.org as requested by Donnie Berkholz:

I have suffered this problem for a while now. I'm using 6.8.0 + ati r128 and it
occurred in previous versions too. Apart from the long term creep effect noted
by Eric, I've found some apps bring out the symptoms very quickly: just browsing
through the menus in emacs (cvs) (no matter which toolkit) can _sometimes_ make
the memory usage of X jump by many 10s of megs at a time. Eventually emacs
always triggers the problem and causes X to eat up all available memory. Opening
a large book with gpdf (but not xpdf) _always_ eats up almost the whole lot
(512MB) straight away. Closing the offending app causes X to freeze (including
the mouse cursor), a lot of swapping seems to happen and then the app is exited
but the X memory usage remains and the WM is sluggish and other apps behave less
well.

Watching xrestop while gpdf is loading a book, I saw that the only noticeable
activity was a steady increase in the "Misc" column which grew to > 60000 in
parallel with top reporting X's memory usage growing beyond 450 MB. The Option
XaaNoPixmapCache had no effect. 

It seems this bug has appeared in xfree86 on debian and in xorg on ubuntu too.

http://lists.debian.org/debian-x/2004/12/msg00393.html

Bug disappear when i startx as root.
But when i relogin as my user it comes back.

Bug exist also in older versions (I've just compiled 6.7.0)

I can confirm that the bug doesn't show itself if running X when logged in as
root. I also noticed that the leaps in memory usage generated by emacs appear to
occur when tooltips are displayed.

(In reply to comment #5)
> I can confirm that the bug doesn't show itself if running X when logged in as
> root. I also noticed that the leaps in memory usage generated by emacs appear to
> occur when tooltips are displayed.

I dont use emacs and I've got memory leaks.

Emacs is just an example app - see comment #2 above. The bug also does not
manifest itself when the apps that trigger it are merely run as root from a
normal user X session.

NB: Alan Swanson's comment 18 in http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=82073 

This bug is closed downscreen due to that noone has been able to reproduce this
problem with >6.9.0. If someone is able to do that, please reopen. 

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=82073

I have similar symptoms. After a few days X uses all my memory and swap.
Some info that might help:

X version: 6.9.0
Distro: Slackware current
VGA: Intel Corporation 82865G Integrated Graphics
Kernel: 2.6.17.4

root@bgs ~ # free -mt
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           492        481         10          0          0         76
-/+ buffers/cache:        404         87
Swap:         1464       1435         28
Total:        1957       1917         39

ps of X:

root      4819  0.4 42.7 1569012 215328 tty3   Ss+  Jul10  62:56
/usr/X11R6/bin/X -br :0 vt3 -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-t9aom9

main memory line from pmap (can post the full output if needed):

5af86000 1485968K rwx--    [ anon ]

Sorry about the phenomenal bug spam, guys.  Adding xorg-team@ to the QA contact so bugs don't get lost in future.

Is this still a problem? Providing a patch is the best way to get it fixed.

Mass closure: This bug has been untouched for more than six years, and is not
obviously still valid. Please reopen this bug or file a new report if you continue to experience issues with current releases.