Gnome shell high memory usage

[Earl Ramirez]

Dear All,

I don't think this is normal but I will like to know if anyone is
experiencing high memory usage from gnome-shell, a week ago was the first
time I saw it and to be honest, I can't say it this is something recent of
if it has always been this memory hungry.

After having my laptop with Fedora 24 on for three days I can see that the
memory consumed by gnome-shell is over 2GB and a week ago it was consuming
6GB.

PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+
COMMAND
  2028 eramirez  20   0 4281540 2.169g  92676 S  10.9 13.9  59:43.98
gnome-shell

Is anyone experiencing this problem?

[Christian Stadelmann]

This is a common issue with gnome-shell.
1. Can you try disabling any gnome-shell extension and see whether it is still present? If no, then one of your extensions is to blame. There is no easy way except manually enabling/disabling them and having a look at gnome-shell's RAM usage.
2. If you are sure it is an issue in gnome-shell, you're probably running into https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=642652.

[Roman]

В Пт, 23/09/2016 в 18:37 +0000, Christian Stadelmann пишет:
> This is a common issue with gnome-shell.
> Can you try disabling any gnome-shell extension and see whether it
>
> is still present? If no, then one of your extensions is to blame.
> There is no easy way except manually enabling/disabling them and
> having a look at gnome-shell's RAM usage.

actually if u r allow some extension(in js even not c) to eat all ur
RAM its bad by design. Firefox/chrome realized it now with thier policy
about plugins

And withoout extensions gnome-shell isnt really useful imho
> If you are sure it is an issue in gnome-shell, you're probably
>
> running into https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=642652.
> _______________________________________________
> users mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]

[Earl Ramirez]

On 23 September 2016 at 20:37, Christian Stadelmann <
[e-mail]> wrote:
> This is a common issue with gnome-shell.
> Can you try disabling any gnome-shell extension and see whether it is
>
> still present? If no, then one of your extensions is to blame. There is no
> easy way except manually enabling/disabling them and having a look at
> gnome-shell's RAM usage.
> 2. If you are sure it is an issue in gnome-shell, you're probably running
> into https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=642652.
> _______________________________________________
> users mailing list -- [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [e-mail]

Thanks, Christian,

Looks like I'm suffering from the bug that was reported years ago, I am
running the vanilla shell that exists in Fedora 24, looks like I will have
to use an alternate Desktop Environment because I don't know why the
gnome-shell has such horrible memory management that can consume up 6GB
based on my experience, can't recall seeing it on F23 though.

Thanks again for your response, highly appreciated.

[Christian Stadelmann]

> Looks like I'm suffering from the bug that was reported years ago, I am
> running the vanilla shell that exists in Fedora 24, looks like I will have
> to use an alternate Desktop Environment because I don't know why the
> gnome-shell has such horrible memory management that can consume up 6GB
> based on my experience, can't recall seeing it on F23 though.

How about contributing the info they need on the upstream bug (see link above) to fix this issue? Free software can only evolve if people contribute, this includes useful information for fixing bugs.

[Earl Ramirez]

> How about contributing the info they need on the upstream bug (see link
> above) to fix this issue? Free software can only evolve if people
> contribute, this includes useful information for fixing bugs.
>
> Will do.

[Andre Robatino]

I don't know if it's normal, but I've gotten into the habit of checking periodically and restarting gnome shell with "Alt-F2 r" if it's high. I do this maybe once a day.

[Joe Zeff]

On 09/23/2016 01:23 PM, Andre Robatino wrote:
> I don't know if it's normal, but I've gotten into the habit of checking periodically and restarting gnome shell with "Alt-F2 r" if it's high. I do this maybe once a day.

If you have to restart Gnome Shell daily, there's something wrong, 
either with your system or Gnome Shell itself.

[Christian Stadelmann]

> On 09/23/2016 01:23 PM, Andre Robatino wrote:
>
> If you have to restart Gnome Shell daily, there's something wrong, 
> either with your system or Gnome Shell itself.

That's probably true. I'm just here to help, not to complain.

[Joe Zeff]

On 09/23/2016 02:44 PM, Christian Stadelmann wrote:
> > On 09/23/2016 01:23 PM, Andre Robatino wrote:
> > > If you have to restart Gnome Shell daily, there's something wrong,
> > > either with your system or Gnome Shell itself.
>
> That's probably true. I'm just here to help, not to complain.

Well, I can't help directly because I don't use Gnome.  However, if this 
were a common issue, there'd be a Bugzilla about it and probably a fast 
patch.  My personal guess is that there's something wrong with the 
system and/or a fairly obscure bug in Gnome Shell or an interaction 
between both.

[Tim]

Allegedly, on or about 23 September 2016, Joe Zeff sent:
> if this were a common issue, there'd be a Bugzilla about it

There is, going back several years.
> and probably a fast patch.

Scoff!  Only if they admit that they're doing it the wrong way.

I gave up on Gnome when they made a desktop look like a tablet computer
display, and they ploughed on with that stupid design philosophy despite
all the complaints.  I went over to using the Mate fork, instead, and
it's far better (for me).  However, the login screen still uses Gnome
shell, and that makes the computer grind to a halt, all by itself,
particularly when its screensaver kicks in (just a static graphic of a
pretty picture).  On computers that are left running all the time, I
periodically have to cold boot them (or go through a lot more malarkey),
to make them stop behaving like a 486 with 2 megs of RAM.

[Andre Robatino]

> On 09/23/2016 01:23 PM, Andre Robatino wrote:
>
> If you have to restart Gnome Shell daily, there's something wrong, 
> either with your system or Gnome Shell itself.

I don't HAVE to do it, I just like to keep the memory usage down. If there's supposed to be some kind of performance gain from the high usage, I don't see it - AFAICT it works just as well after the restart as before. If it's caching something it would be interesting to know what.

[Earl Ramirez]

> I don't HAVE to do it, I just like to keep the memory usage down. If
> there's supposed to be some kind of performance gain from the high usage, I
> don't see it - AFAICT it works just as well after the restart as before. If
> it's caching something it would be interesting to know what.

What version of Fedora are you using?

[Andre Robatino]

> What version of Fedora are you using?

F24 x86_64 (clean install). It doesn't use that much memory for me - I have 16 GB, and after a day or so it gets to as high as 2%, restarting gets it down to about 0.8%. I got into the habit when the machine had less memory and it would get up to around 10%. My original post was just to mention restarting, in case the OP was unaware of it - it's easy to do, unlike logging out or rebooting. Even if it used a lot more, I wouldn't bother changing desktops because of it, unless it got wedged somehow if I forgot to restart.