openSUSE 13.2, uptime is 6 days. I’ve got Firefox open with 3 tabs and CrashPlan running in the background for backups. Using htop, kdeinit4 seems to constantly grow over time in memory use.
ps aux | grep kde
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 57 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S Nov17 0:00 [kdevtmpfs]
test 1875 0.0 0.0 13072 2636 ? Ss Nov17 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/startkde
root 2014 0.0 0.0 4068 24 ? S Nov17 0:00 /usr/lib64/kde4/libexec/start_kdeinit +kcminit_startup
test 2016 0.0 0.3 346828 30880 ? Ss Nov17 0:00 kdeinit4: kdeinit4 Running...
test 2017 0.0 0.2 351148 20276 ? S Nov17 0:00 kdeinit4: klauncher [kdeinit] --fd=9
test 2019 0.0 14.3 2348584 1168960 ? Sl Nov17 0:38 kdeinit4: kded4 [kdeinit]
test 2025 0.0 0.3 433896 29596 ? S Nov17 0:00 kdeinit4: kglobalaccel [kdeinit]
test 2050 0.0 0.3 518604 31548 ? Sl Nov17 0:03 kdeinit4: ksmserver [kdeinit]
test 2103 0.6 2.2 3906840 185964 ? Sl Nov17 56:31 kdeinit4: plasma-desktop [kdeinit]
test 2163 0.0 0.6 1355316 50176 ? Sl Nov17 0:04 kdeinit4: krunner [kdeinit]
test 2165 0.0 0.5 671820 41384 ? Sl Nov17 0:02 kdeinit4: kmix [kdeinit] -session 106d616368000141325654900000
test 2188 0.0 0.3 439444 31260 ? S Nov17 0:00 kdeinit4: klipper [kdeinit]
test 2190 0.0 0.4 379912 32812 ? Sl Nov17 0:01 /usr/lib64/kde4/libexec/polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1
test 2809 0.5 0.5 533792 44292 ? Sl 19:42 0:02 kdeinit4: konsole [kdeinit]
test 4294 0.0 0.0 10520 1532 pts/2 S+ 19:48 0:00 grep --color=auto kde
test 7969 0.0 0.0 109036 6512 ? S Nov19 0:00 /usr/lib64/kde4/libexec/kdesud
test 16461 0.0 0.3 441980 29884 ? S Nov21 0:00 kdeinit4: kwalletd [kdeinit]
Yes, if I reboot it’s fine for a while. But as the days go by, it grows.
Machine has 8GB RAM, but KDE seems to be using more than I would expect. I know there are better ways to narrow down what’s using the memory, but I don’t know how. What can I do to find what’s using it and how do I prevent it from using so much?
A search of these forums would return numerous threads about KDE high memory usage.
First, it shouldn’t be a practical issue. Practically all modern OS today will consume as many resources as might be available over time… In general the idea is that if something is already in RAM, it’ll respond (start) and run faster. So, increased memory use isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But, the critical issue is whether resources can be re-allocated promptly when a task is invoked and resources are insufficient. How quickly can low priority allocated resources be re-allocated?
If you want to manually free up resources without rebooting, I included a command for doing so as part of my description how to use the “free” tool (see the last section at the following link) http://en.opensuse.org/User:Tsu2/free_tool
You can also select a desktop that uses fewer resources than KDE,
During bootup you can select the following a full Desktops that use less resources than KDE
LXDE
XFCE
And there are other Desktops that use less resources (like Minimal X) or no Desktop at all (server, which is text only).
Thank you for the info. I am aware that I want programs to utilize memory, I’m just trying to make sure there’s not something wrong. What can I look at more in depth to find what’s using what and see if that’s ok?
IMO, 8GB RAM, sitting at a desktop with just Firefox open with a couple tabs and swap starts being used, something’s not right.
>
> Thank you for the info. I am aware that I want programs to utilize
> memory, I’m just trying to make sure there’s not something wrong. What
> can I look at more in depth to find what’s using what and see if that’s
> ok?
>
> IMO, 8GB RAM, sitting at a desktop with just Firefox open with a couple
> tabs and swap starts being used, something’s not right.
>
>
The blunt answer is that unused memory is wasted/cached memory ( meant in
the best possible way though ) it is a lot faster than any hard drive and so
should be looked upon as a speed bonus.
If you launch a program that needs that memory then linux will automatically
free up the memory needed.
It has a very good memory management system.
trust me
I would certainly not…
–
Mark
Caveat emptor
Nullus en verba
Nil Illigitimi Carborundum
3 year OLD thread but quite a few openSUSE users confirm. More importantly they continue right up to yesterday
I can confirm this on two (desktop and laptop) installs of openSUSE 13.2 with KDE 4.14.2 from standard openSUSE repos. $ rpm -qf which kded4 kdelibs4-4.14.2-1.1.x86_64
Main fix seem to circle around power management.
I also get a growing kded4 process, goes from 11mb at boot to 500-600mb and does not stop. Am on desktop.
Slap me silly if that is designed feature or memory management. Is KDE gone wild. Question is why.
I just rebooted with no power management. So far kded4 seems is in coma, does not move.
I have zero of PIM, Akonadi, Baloo stuff running so if that is considered “core” features my issue is invalid. Should test cleanly with mostly standard programs and such. I have not enough imagination to believe adding that bunch will help with any memory issue. But sure, in theory you could have a 3rd party process messing up KDEs own memory management. Then barking up the wrong tree.
Reason I avoid all semantic PIM/desktop stuff is not that I have not used it or do not want to - just gave up for much the same reasons as they talk about in that tread.
I wonder if anyone has tested power management settings, like one by one? Would be interesting if issue is a setting/toggle and not entire process. Fix of disabling is not really a good one. Some hours of fun to be had testing that.
Apparently this wasn’t a KDE bug after all, according to the latest comment. It seems to have been a memleak in polkit, fixed yesterday.
I created packages with the fix, can you please install them and report back whether the fix helps? Preferably in this openSUSE bug report: https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=863078#c8
I do not see this memleak here at all (my system doesn’t announce any backlight brightness control), so cannot tell whether it works now.
I thought it would be an idea to check state of kded4 with power management turned on before testing fix. D#¤%#¤ thing seem stable now! Disappointed… I enabled what was disabled, removed the enable desktop start up script plus another one setting dpms. Rebooted. Private memory starts at 12 or so, after 1-2 hours it sit 20. Might as well be 12 as depends on what is activated. Is not leaking. Before very easy and fast to reproduce by toggling Power Management/powerdevil on/off. Was not weird combo but consistent leakage.
OK.
On one hand I’d say good that the problem disappeared for you.
But on the other hand this doesn’t help in testing whether the fix works then of course…
I am on a desktop computer btw.
Doesn’t matter really. Even a desktop computer can support backlight controls.
Actually I do see the problem on one (intel) desktop system as well, which supports backlight, but has a monitor connected (CRT) that does not have one. There is a constant increase in kded4’s memory usage by 100MBs of RAM in a few hours.
I will test the fix there of course, but cannot do that before the weekend.
According to the openSUSE report the problem should actually not occur on laptops where backlight controls are working.
