Gnome 14.10 memory leak, over 5gb of gnome-shell

Question

I want to find text files by their name and then get their contents and make them into a var.

I have tried to find the file by its name, but it doesn't seem to work. I'm clueless as to how to find the file contents though.

My code to find the file:

function testThing() { 
    var findquestions = DriveApp.getFilesByName('tempquestions.txt')
Logger.log(findquestions)
}

I want it to log what it found, but the output is nothing but: "FileIterator". I don't know what that means.

Solution

gnome-shell leaks memory like a colander.

There is a bug reported here (it's for Mint but it's the same problem) and on redhat.

Upstream there are at least 9 bugs reported.

Basically (one developer told me once, I can't find the reference) gnome-shell is completely unable (by design) to control the memory usage of its extensions. Add this to the fact that there is no API documentation for writing them (at least, I could not find it when I wrote mine) and well... leak happens.

In my case, I had to remove a couple of extensions (sensors and weather were the main culprits) that made the shell grows like crazy. Even now, every now and then I have to restart the shell with Alt-F2 and r to get it back to its normal size (and then you have to cope with gnome-terminals going crazy...).

Practical solution:

1. remove all extensions, look at the memory usage, and add them one by one to find the worst offender(s).

2. gnome-shell still leaks memory by itself, or you really need some extensions. So I do every now and then (basically every morning, my PC is normally on 24/7):

3. kill gnome terminals to avoid the bug above (in 14.04-shell 3.10; should be fixed in newer shell), by doing from one of them:

   killall gnome-terminal 
   

   and reset the shell with Alt-F2 and r

PD: I know, there are others DEs. But I like gnome-shell, call me crazy...

Comments

[Charles Green]

A have a couple of scripts which clear the cache, and push swap back onto disk. If you would like to try them I can post them into an answer.

[Panther]

Please post more information on your memory use. output of free -m. top can also help. Linux is not windows and unused RAM is wasted RAM. Hard to know if you even have a problem. Clearing the cache and pushing swap back to disk may or may not help.

[Osama bin Gandhi]

here is my free -m output: total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 7967 7555 412 43 33 2739 -/+ buffers/cache: 4781 3185 Swap: 3813 588 3225

[Osama bin Gandhi]

I prefer the system not to use swap completely as it uses the ssd to much and it only makes the system slower. It is a bit annoying that it is so hard to stop the system from using it. I do want to be able to put the computer to sleep :-)

[Rmano]

For the close voters: I think that this is fully in topic with the Gnome flavor of Ubuntu.

[Rmano]

This is still relevant. Gnome shell leaks memory, in current LTS also, often due to some (badly written) extension. So I think it's worth keeping this open.

[Elder Geek]

It's still a bug, no? Although it appears it doesn't happen when using intel video drivers... Perhaps this is only an NVIDIA issue?

[Osama bin Gandhi]

I might need to take away an extension. I tried a extension that monitors temperature but i didnt get it to work anyways...I would be great if it were that simple! I really like the simplicity of gnome instead of unity :-P

[Osama bin Gandhi]

i unistalled a few gnome programs to lessen the memory, now it is only up to 3gb. I will see tomorrow if it helped. I also disabled the firefox-ubuntu-addon inside firefox. I hope this helps :-)

[Osama bin Gandhi]

didnt seem to work....3.6gb and climbing :-(

[Osama bin Gandhi]

Up to 6.1gb now....This does not feel normal. It is a very fresh install with very little tinkering done to the system.

[Rmano]

Try to remove all extensions and repeat. If still there, it is probably something introduced in 14.10 --- so a bug report would be the right way. I have no intention to upgrade now... I have work to do ;-)

[Osama bin Gandhi]

It seems that the removal of extensions seemed to work after i rebooted :-) Now it is stable on 2.3gb. Thanks for the help!!!!

[Rmano]

Yep. This is the same for me. It would be nice to build a list of "safe" extensions... if you think the question is answered, please mark it so. askubuntu.com/help/someone-answers

[Rmano]

Note to @korc about your suggested script to automate this (in edit): restarting the shell and killing the terminals can be disruptive of what you're doing, and cause data loss if done at the wrong time. So I think it's basically a manual thing...

[Xiaodong Qi]

On Ubuntu 16.04.2, $ killall gnome-terminal' gives gnome-terminal: no process found`. Memory usage is increasing rapidly. Any update?

[Rmano]

@XiaodongQi, if you have no terminals running, simply skip the step. The trick here is to find which extension (if any) is creating the leak. Use gnome-tweak-tool to see which extensions are loaded, and explore from there. In my 16.04.2 gnome-shell is quite usable, barring the sporadic crash-and-restart.