Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

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oscarus

Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by oscarus »

I'm running Linux Mint 14 (Cinnamon,64-bit) and I've noticed that Nemo has a tendency to use more and more memory every time I perform certain actions such as opening new windows or emptying the trash. Nemo usually starts using around 25Mb, but the number keeps rising, and after a few days of doing some basic file managing tasks (I don't deal with huge files or folders, smb transfers, or lots of thumbnails) the memory jumps to around 300Mb and higher.

I tried to replicate my problem in this video to give you an idea of what happens when I open and close a folder:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCYEZLBTt5c
(notice that closing windows doesn't free any memory)

So my questions are:
  • Is this normal?
    Is this something I should be worried about?
    Is anyone else experiencing similar things?
    I read a bit about memory usage (stuff like linuxatemyram.com) but I'm not sure if that's related to this... Does this behavior have anything to do with some weird caching stuff or something like that?
    Is there a possibility that gtk+ themes or icons could have something to do with this? I was using the faience theme but switched to Mint-x because it was making the memory use worse.
I'd really appreciate any help or information regarding this issue.

On an additional note, I just restarted my laptop (right after I recorded that video) and noticed that cinnamon is using a lot less memory than what is shown in the video (it's using 90MB now vs the 254 MB in the video) but I wasn't as concerned about it because takes cinnamon a while to reach that compared to nemo.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Admiral_Obvious

Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by Admiral_Obvious »

I can confirm this behavior.

I'm running Linux Mint 13 (Cinnamon, 64-bit) with backports enabled. At this point, with an uptime of 8 days, and a bunch of appications open, nemo is up to 4.5 gigs of my 8 gigs of ram, and is using about 100% of one of my 4 cores. I noticed the problem when nemo started to get slow.

My configuration is pretty vanilla, I've added a few things here and there, but the only thing [that I can think of] which would affect nemo was adding RabbitVCS for svn, using the procedure here:
http://codemonkeymagic.blogspot.com/201 ... n-and.html

I'm not sure it it is related, but I also noticed that the output of ps aux --sort -%mem does not agree with what gnome system monitor displays, insofar as CPU% for nemo and /usr/bin/cinnamon
(ps aux --sort -%mem shows /usr/bin/cinnamon as using 79% of the CPU, and shows nemo as only using 0.8% (see the top 10 lines of output below), yet gnome system monitor at approximately the same time listed nemo as taking 96%, and cinnamon around 48%.

Output of ps aux --sort -%mem:
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
goodwc3 6331 0.8 57.3 6634048 4666328 ? Rl Jan31 108:15 nemo
root 5304 7.3 9.6 758152 785328 tty7 Rs+ Jan31 915:44 /usr/bin/X :0 -audit 0 -auth /var/lib/mdm/:0.Xauth -nolisten tcp vt7
goodwc3 9987 1.6 8.6 1841280 702892 ? Sl Jan31 210:02 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox
goodwc3 5448 79.8 2.7 2039532 226348 ? Rl Jan31 9904:47 /usr/bin/cinnamon
goodwc3 5535 0.0 1.3 870476 112060 ? S Jan31 0:47 /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/rabbitvcs/services/checkerservice.pyc
goodwc3 10802 1.2 0.8 1006424 66868 ? Sl Jan31 153:37 /usr/lib/firefox/plugin-container /opt/mint-flashplugin-11/libflashplayer.so -greomni /usr/lib/firefox/omni.ja 9987 true plugin
goodwc3 7169 0.0 0.7 1036436 62972 ? Sl 03:01 0:05 evince /tmp/oe-17-10-8246-1.pdf
goodwc3 5637 0.0 0.6 450444 55020 ? Sl Jan31 1:08 gnome-screensaver
goodwc3 20459 1.3 0.5 505184 44056 ? Sl 15:00 0:06 eog /home/goodwc3/Pictures/Screenshot from 2013-02-01 12:58:31.png
goodwc3 18861 0.1 0.4 1916064 34172 ? Ssl Jan31 23:40 /home/goodwc3/.dropbox-dist/dropbox
goodwc3 20737 0.0 0.3 1623464 27048 ? Sl Jan31 6:37 /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin --writer --splash-pipe=6
goodwc3 5464 0.0 0.3 1457920 26352 ? Sl Jan31 3:14 nautilus -n
goodwc3 31901 0.0 0.2 1171432 21684 ? Sl 02:30 0:09 evince /tmp/1-s2.0-S016943321101573X-main.pdf
goodwc3 2610 0.0 0.2 568176 20416 ? Sl Feb04 0:07 gnome-terminal


for good measure, here's the output of inxi -Fc 0

System: Host: goodwc3-ThinkPad-W530 Kernel: 3.2.0-23-generic x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Gnome Distro: Linux Mint 13 Maya
Machine: System: Dell product: Vostro 430 version: 00
Mobo: Dell model: 054KM3 version: A01 Bios: Dell version: 2.0.3 date: 03/15/2010
CPU: Quad core Intel Core i5 CPU 750 (-MCP-) cache: 8192 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx)
Clock Speeds: 1: 1200.00 MHz 2: 1200.00 MHz 3: 2668.00 MHz 4: 1200.00 MHz
Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Juniper [Radeon HD 5700 Series]
X.Org: 1.11.3 driver: fglrx Resolution: 2560x1440@60.0hz, 2560x1440@60.0hz
GLX Renderer: ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series GLX Version: 4.2.11627 - CPC
Audio: Card-1: Intel 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel Sound: ALSA ver: 1.0.24
Card-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Juniper HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5700 Series] driver: snd_hda_intel
Network: Card: Broadcom NetLink BCM57780 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe driver: tg3
IF: eth1 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: a4:ba:db:fb:bd:9a
Drives: HDD Total Size: 500.1GB (10.9% used) 1: /dev/sda ST95005620AS 500.1GB
Partition: ID: / size: 25G used: 5.8G (25%) fs: ext4 ID: /boot size: 109M used: 34M (33%) fs: ext4
ID: /home size: 257G used: 45G (19%) fs: ext4 ID: swap-1 size: 17.83GB used: 2.28GB (13%) fs: swap
Sensors: Error: You do not have the sensors app installed.
Info: Processes: 198 Uptime: 8 days Memory: 7703.6/7945.8MB Client: Shell inxi: 1.7.33

I'll be interested to hear if there is a fix.

Best Regards!
LittleRed

Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by LittleRed »

I'm having the same problem, only Nemo chews up 3.5GB of memory (and a high CPU for about 10 seconds) when you first start it.

I discovered that it seemed to do it only when using a custom GTK theme. Changing the GTK theme back to default solved the problem.
kaefert
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Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by kaefert »

I have the same problem, and I did not change any themes.

Nemo starts up with about 40mb RAM usage, and crawls its way up to several GB until all free RAM is eaten up and my system response becomes slugish. Then I have to kill nemo and restart it. With heavy usage of nemo this nemo killing is necessairy about once every few hours!

I am running linux mint 14 with nemo 1.1.2 and all the latest updates installed.
I am making use of smb and sftp mounts inside nemo a lot, so maybe thats a factor.
I've also installed several nemo-plugins like compare and RabbitVCS
oscarus

Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by oscarus »

Yeah, it's very strange. For me it sometimes crashes if it has been active for a few days, and I just have to open a folder to restart it. I don't get to see how much memory it has used by the time it crashes and I don't really notice my system slowing down, but I assume that Nemo is using huge amounts of memory which causes it to crash.

The memory problem is still there with different themes and even the default theme. I was hoping some of the issues would improve with the latest versions, but I didn't really notice any difference. I was never sure whether this problem was worthy of a bug report or one of those things that eventually get fixed with every release (kind of similar to how firefox always said that there were memory usage improvements with every version)
eanfrid

Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by eanfrid »

I have a Cinnamon session opened since 12 days on my LM15 desktop and Nemo 1.8.3 is still consuming less than 46MiB (yes, this machine is on 24/7) :? Maybe your issue has been solved with newer versions than the old 1.1.2.
oscarus

Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by oscarus »

eanfrid wrote:I have a Cinnamon session opened since 12 days on my LM15 desktop and Nemo 1.8.3 is still consuming less than 46MiB (yes, this machine is on 24/7) :? Maybe your issue has been solved with newer versions than the old 1.1.2.
I'm using Nemo 1.8.4 on LM 14 and I still notice this behavior. Do you think that using LM15 might make a difference?

Some details for future reference:
Started: Mon Jul 15 01:32:06
Memory: 109.5 MiB
Virtual:1.2 GiB
Resident: 77.4 MiB
Writable: 66 MiB
Shared: 11.4 MiB
X Server: 43.5 MiB
eanfrid

Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by eanfrid »

oscarus wrote:Do you think that using LM15 might make a difference?
I dont think so :(

Memory: 27.6 MiB
Virtual: 960.2 GiB
Resident: 46.0 MiB
Writable: 24.1 MiB
Shared: 21.9 MiB
X Server: 3.5 MiB
technically_not

Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by technically_not »

My system's been up for a while (11 days), though for most of that the system has been suspened, and I can confirm this behaviour: currently taking up 2.2GB of my 4GB of memory. Have we discovered the problem yet? It got particularly bad I think when I started transferring large (>1GB) files around. Maybe it's not clearing some sort of cache or buffer it's made?

Info: LM15, fairly fresh install, only a couple of weeks old, custom theme (Not sure it's important, but I'll say it anyway).
eanfrid

Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by eanfrid »

Looks like you are worrying about the wrong numbers. You seem to be talking about virtual memory size (i.e. VIRT or VSZ) which is not the actual memory that your process consumes: if you add all VSZ amounts - including process run by the system and other users - you will end up with a total obviously equal to many times you real RAM amount. Check resident memory (RES or RSS) to come much closer to the real thing.
nimda

Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by nimda »

eanfrid wrote:Looks like you are worrying about the wrong numbers. You seem to be talking about virtual memory size (i.e. VIRT or VSZ) which is not the actual memory that your process consumes: if you add all VSZ amounts - including process run by the system and other users - you will end up with a total obviously equal to many times you real RAM amount. Check resident memory (RES or RSS) to come much closer to the real thing.
I'm running Mint 15 Cinnamon x64 with 8 GiB of RAM and the resident memory of Nemo (1.8.3) is 3.7 GiB.
oscarus

Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by oscarus »

It seems like they are aware of this:

Some people point out that there might be a memory leak, a contributor says Nemo 1.8.4 fixes it...
https://github.com/linuxmint/nemo/issues/349
https://github.com/linuxmint/nemo/issues/354

It turns out it might not fix it after all. A new fix will be released soon in the Romeo repositories.
https://github.com/linuxmint/nemo/issue ... t-21321379

I'm crossing my fingers here! :)
eanfrid

Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by eanfrid »

nimda wrote:I'm running Mint 15 Cinnamon x64 with 8 GiB of RAM and the resident memory of Nemo (1.8.3) is 3.7 GiB.
:shock: Looks like I ditched these memory leaks because I neither use thumbnails in Nemo nor evince that I replaced with qpdfview a long time ago.
HilltopsGM
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Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by HilltopsGM »

I am trying to wrap my brain around what version to use to act as the host for my squid proxy server - MEMORY USAGE IS CRITICAL with that proxy.

Could this ( [url]http://www.linuxatemyram.com/[/url] ) explain what is happening and that this isn't really a problem at all, rather the way it is meant to be?
eanfrid

Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by eanfrid »

If you were implying to compare Windows memory use with Linux memory use, you were indeed wrong to do so. Memory management under these two OS is radically different. Linux tries to maximize the use of your RAM in order to make apps run smoother and quicker. There can be memory leaks but as a general rule, the more RAM you have onboard, the faster your computer will run. And one effect among others is that "unused" memory is progressively taken over for disk-caching and i/o buffering purpose.

Code: Select all

free -mt
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         16039      15441        597          0        501      11671
-/+ buffers/cache:       3268      12770
Swap:         1023          0       1023
Total:       17063      15441       1621
HilltopsGM
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Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by HilltopsGM »

eanfrid,

So would you say that the 'Memory Leak' issues that I have seen posted around the web are related to a lack of understanding of how linux uses RAM?

For my Squid Proxy I was looking at all of these:

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server edition
Mint 13 64bit
Mint 15 64bit
Mint 15 Xfce

I'd like to have the option of a GUI, but would like to Use the least amount of ram (to run things in the background) as possible.
I'd think the server edition would meet that, but there is no GUI unless I install it.

. . . I digress, Is Ubuntu or Mint pretty good for running for days without a restart with respect to this issue everyone seems to be having?
eanfrid

Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by eanfrid »

A heavy memory use made by some apps does not necessarily mean or imply some kind of memory leak. Many users misunderstand the way Linux manages memory though. However, on this topic, there were reports of uncommonly high cpu usage which can be related to some Nemo bug regarding thumbnails display and refresh. Memory leaks and high cpu usage are two different issues.

Using a GUI will always eat a lot of memory and it is both useless and a waste a resources to run X apps in whatever DE on a server where you want to use memory in an efficient manner. Nonetheless you can run a DE on a server. The main problem is that X is not a very secure environment, enlarging the "attack surface".
SirCadogan

Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by SirCadogan »

:!: Hi folks,

I found out it's Nemo's heap. You see it with System Monitor > Processes tab > right-click nemo > Memory Maps. Every time the list refreshes, i.e. about every 3 seconds, nemo has eaten some 200 kB again. First time I saw it its heap size was more than 2 GB. What worked was to kill the process and restart, but I'm sure that's not how it's meant to be. Many users work with Mint's suspend function, thus their Linux session can easily take a net time of several days. So dear nemo developers: Go ahead and fix your heap management.

Just for completeness: I am using LMDE with nemo 1.8.3

Regards,
SirCadogan
killer de bug

Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by killer de bug »

Maybe before complaining you should upgrade your system. Nemo is now in the 2.0 version... :roll:
MR277
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Re: Is Nemo 1.1.2 leaking memory?

Post by MR277 »

I am using Nemo 2.2.2 on Linux Mint 17.0. I have used mint for a year now but this is a fresh install (and I didn.'t have the problem before). I have 8 GB of RAM in the PC

In a single day, the amount of RAM used by the "Nemo" process, according to the system monitor, passed from 15 Mbytes to 4300 Mbytes. Yes, over 4 Gbytes.

The system was idle, I simply had left the PC in stand-by overnight, with Firefox and other programs open. i closed every program and every window, but the memory used by nemo remained the same. And it was NOT a "nomal way to operate", that was not memory cache, the system was very, very sluggish.

I don't know what the problem is, but Nemo 2.2 didn't solve it (maybe it worsened it, as i said I didn't have the same problem with Mint 15 - I skipped 16
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