Xfce Forum

pkdunn

Member

Registered: 2007-09-25

Posts: 4

xfdesktop memory usage: it grows and grows....

Hi all

I've just started using xfce after being a KDE user.  One reason was the promise of Olivier: Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for various *NIX systems. Designed for productivity, it loads and executes applications fast, while conserving system resources."  I'm a linux user, but nowhere near an expert.  A mate has helped me get started.

However, after using xfce for a few weeks now, it is apparent that my memory usage keep increasing through my workday.  After logging in about 8 hours ago, I seethe following:
xfdesktop is consuming 282MB of memory, and xfce4-menu-plugin about 276MB.  Half an hour later, the figures are 302 MB and 297MB respectively.

At the start of the day, it was much smaller.  In fact, my 2GB of RAM is currently using 1499MB.  So much for lightweight!  If I do not reboot, eventually the system becomes so slow that it is unacceptably slow (obvious delays of the order of seconds).  If I log out and log in every day, things are kept at  bay (ie, the machine doesn't slow down so much that it becomes unuseable).  But that's hardly the point.

Where should I look for the problem so I can fix it (or, more likely, someone else can tell me how to fix it)?

Thanks.

P.

ejdolf

Member

Registered: 2007-09-23

Posts: 5

Re: xfdesktop memory usage: it grows and grows....

Which version of xfce are you running?

herd

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2006-05-18

Posts: 143

Website

Re: xfdesktop memory usage: it grows and grows....

If I'm not totally wrong here, I remember that:
1. The menu plugin will try to load all .desktop files to populate itself with applications.
2. The paths that it will look in are XDG-standards plus some config settings that can be distribution dependant.

Perhaps some of these paths are symlinked in a loop on your system?
What number do you get when you do:
locate -r .desktop$|wc -l

hth,

herd

pkdunn

Member

Registered: 2007-09-25

Posts: 4

Re: xfdesktop memory usage: it grows and grows....

> locate -r .desktop$|wc -l
4323

I'm not sure what that means or tells you, but that's the number!

P.

pkdunn

Member

Registered: 2007-09-25

Posts: 4

Re: xfdesktop memory usage: it grows and grows....

Which version of xfce are you running?

Which version? The "About Xfce" menu item tells me it is version 4.3.99.2 (Xfce 4.4 RC2).

Hope that helps.  Thanks.

P.

herd

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2006-05-18

Posts: 143

Website

Re: xfdesktop memory usage: it grows and grows....

This known bug probably applies to you:

http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1910

Obvious exits are:
- upgrade to 4.4
- compile plugin only (perhaps your mate knows)
- switch (use well known kicker with Xfce)

hth,

herd

Pindakoe

Member

From: NL

Registered: 2003-11-26

Posts: 116

Re: xfdesktop memory usage: it grows and grows....

You may have a memory leak of sorts with your configuration. Upgrading to latest version should at least fix some of the known bugs. I would also recomemnd to try a minimum XFCE (without many plugins) and then install the plugins one by one and only proceed to the next one if you are convinced RAM usage is not increasing.

Some other info on RAM: You quote a number of 1499MB of RAM in use, whcih I guess refers to total amt of RAM in use by Linux. The free command shows you how much of this is used for buffers & caching -- typically a lot (Linux is pretty aggressive  with this, but happily returns it when other apps need RAM). I run Xfce on a 512MB system which also has a lot more than desktop processes running (mail server, web content filter & caching proxy, spamfilter, NFS-fileshare, samba and some heavy duty crunching worth approx 68M resident) without noticing issues. May be run the top command to see whether certain processes are hogging the CPU..

Daemon-

Member

Registered: 2008-01-19

Posts: 1

Re: xfdesktop memory usage: it grows and grows....

when running the free command, you should look at the second line it displays