X is consuming ~100 GiB of RAM(!)

Vladimir Dergachev volodya at mindspring.com
Wed Dec 6 00:17:37 UTC 2017



On Tue, 5 Dec 2017, Ewen Chan wrote:

> Not really sure.
> Someone suggested that I tried Xvfb but I didn't really know how I can use that without using an X server already, and again, in trying to conduct my own due diligence research into the
> issue, I stumbled upon using ssh -Y and enabling X11 forwarding via ssh so I will have to see how that works next (unless there are other suggestions that come before that that I can also
> quickly test out as well).

If your app relies on GL you don't want to use ssh -Y.

If it does not, then I recommend running it in Xvnc instead.

best

Vladimir Dergachev

> 
> Thanks.
> 
> On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 6:36 PM, Vladimir Dergachev <volodya at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>       Also, given the the high usage does not happen outside of gnome session, perhaps this is connected to compositing..
>
>       best
>
>       Vladimir Dergachev
>
>       On Wed, 6 Dec 2017, Hi-Angel wrote:
>
>             The troubleshooting link you provided states that the high memory
>             usage typically belongs to some other application. Sorry, I am just an
>             occasional bystander here, and can't tell much of technical details,
>             but I imagine it works like this(I hope someone will correct me on
>             details): an app requests, for example, a glx object, and XServer
>             allocates one. When the app is done with the object, it requests
>             XServer to deallocate it. The point is: although this memory accounted
>             on part of XServer process — it is actually owned by the app. The link
>             also states that you can use `xrestop` application to see the owners
>             and amounts of the memory.
>
>             On 5 December 2017 at 21:14, Ewen Chan <chan.ewen at gmail.com> wrote:
>                   To Whom It May Concern:
>
>                   Hello everybody. My name is Ewen and I am new to this distribution list.
>
>                   So let me start with a little bit of background and the problem statement of
>                   what I am seeing/encountering.
>
>                   I am running a SuperMicro Server 6027TR-HTRF
>                   (https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/2u/6027/sys-6027tr-htrf.cfm)
>                   (which uses a Matrox G200eW graphics chip and it has four half-width nodes,
>                   each node has two processor, each processor is an Intel Xeon E5-2690 (v1)
>                   (8-core, 2.9 GHz stock, HTT disabled) running SuSE Linux Enterprise Server
>                   12 SP1 (SLES 12 SP1).
>
>                   Here are some of the outputs from the system:
>
>                   ewen at aes4:~> X -version
>
>                   X.Org X Server 1.15.2
>                   Release Date: 2014-06-27
>                   X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
>                   Build Operating System: openSUSE SUSE LINUX
>                   Current Operating System: Linux aes4 3.12.49-11-default #1 SMP Wed Nov 11
>                   20:52:43 UTC 2015 (8d714a0) x86_64
>                   Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.12.49-11-default
>                   root=UUID=fc4dcdb9-2468-422c-b29f-8da42fd7dec0
>                   resume=/dev/disk/by-uuid/1d5d8a9c-218e-4b66-b094-f5154ab08434 splash=silent
>                   quit showopts crashkernel=123M,high crashkernel=72M,low
>                   Build Date: 12 November 2015  01:23:55AM
>
>                   Current version of pixman: 0.32.6
>                            Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
>                            to make sure that you have the latest version.
>                   ewen at aes4:~> uname -a
>                   Linux aes4 3.12.49-11-default #1 SMP Wed Nov 11 20:52:43 UTC 2015 (8d714a0)
>                   x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
>
>                   The problem that I am having is that I am running a CAE analysis application
>                   and during the course of the run, X will eventually consume close to 100 GiB
>                   of RAM (out of 125 GiB installed)
>
>                   ewen at aes4:~> date
>                   Tue Dec 5 05:08:28 EST 2017
>                   ewen at aes4:~> ps aux | grep Xorg
>                   root 2245 7.7 79.0 271100160 104332316 tty7 Ssl+ Nov25 1078:19 /usr/bin/Xorg
>                   :0 -background none -verbose -auth /run/gdm/aut
>                   h-for-gdm-9L7Ckz/database -seat seat0 -nolisten tcp vt7
>                   ewen 11769 0.0 0.0 10500 944 pts/1 R+ 05:08 0:00 grep --color=auto Xorg
>
>                   This does not occur when I perform the same analysis in runlevel 3 and when
>                   I switch back to runlevel 5 and I am using GNOME for the desktop
>                   environment, regardless of whether I initiate the analysis via a Terminal
>                   inside GNOME or I ssh into the system (via cygwin from a Windows box), the
>                   host server's X memory usage will continually increase as the analysis
>                   progresses.
>
>                   In trying to research this issue, I have found that I can either restrict
>                   the amount of cache that X does via ulimit -m (Source:
>                   https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/HighMemory) or I can edit
>                   xorg.conf by adding this option:
>
>                   Option "XaaNoPixmapCache"
>
>                   (Source: https://www.x.org/releases/current/doc/man/man5/xorg.conf.5.xhtml)
>
>                   Would that be the recommended solution to the problem that I am experiencing
>                   with X?
>
>                   A couple of other notes:
>
>                   ewen at aes4:~> free -g
>                                total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
>                   Mem:           125        125          0          0          0          3
>                   -/+ buffers/cache:        122          3
>                   Swap:          256        170         85
>                   ewen at aes4:~> cat /proc/sys/vm/vfs_cache_pressure
>                   200
>
>                   Your help and commentary would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
>
>                   Sincerely,
>
>                   Ewen Chan
>
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> 
> 
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