Re: Memory leak
On Fri 11 Feb 2022 at 20:04:35 (+0100), Linux-Fan wrote:
> Stefan Monnier writes:
>
> > > I used to have 8 GB on the system, and it would start to thrash at
> > > about 7+ GB usage. I recently ugrade to 16 GB; memory usage is
> > > currently over 8 GB, and it seems to be slowly but steadily increasing.
> >
> > Presumably you bought 16GB to make use of it, right?
> > So it's only natural for your OS to try and put that memory to use.
> > Any "free memory" is memory that could potentially be used for something
> > more useful (IOW "free" = "wasted" in some sense).
> >
> > It's normal for memory use to increase over time, as your OS finds more
> > things to put into it.
>
> That was my first intuition, too. There is even a classic website
> about this very topic: https://www.linuxatemyram.com/
>
> HOWEVER, given that the OP mentions looking at the RSS sizes I think
> the classic "all memory used" issue is already ruled-out. The issue
> seems to be modern webbrowsers which could be considered OSes on their
> own already hence they also claim more resources whenever it is useful
> for them.
>
> Firefox takes just above 1600 MiB here with only six tabs open for
> four hours. Yet I am pretty sure it would take less were this a
> "lower-end" system e.g. fewer CPU cores would cause fewer processes to
> be spawned and hence the memory efficiency might be better in such
> cases.
Very slow, but I can run FF (≤3 tabs) and mpv in bullseye on a 2004-era
laptop: Pentium M i386 1.5GHz 512MB with 1GB swap (encrypted, as is /home).
I don't run it for hours on end¹. Compared with buster, it's slower to
start FF, but no slowdown with loading pages. (Of course, buster was
running FF 6X.X rather than the new 91.6.)
¹ It's a non-portable laptop. Remove the power cable and it's dead.
Cheers,
David.
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