Re: [tigervnc-users] Tiger VNC Memory consumption

616 views
Skip to first unread message

Pierre Ossman

unread,
Nov 20, 2018, 4:20:46 AM11/20/18
to kar...@umsl.edu, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support
On 11/19/18 6:30 PM, kar...@umsl.edu wrote:
>
> Basically if I leave it running over night, this service memory consumption will grow and take up 50 and the system just crawls.
>
> I also have x0vncserver for display :0 running as a systemd service and I'm not having any memory or cpu issues with it.
>
> Any thoughts?
>

It's not something we are aware of right now. What does it look like in
"top"?

And could you run the command "xrestop" and see what it reports?

Regards
--
Pierre Ossman Software Development
Cendio AB https://cendio.com
Teknikringen 8 https://twitter.com/ThinLinc
583 30 Linköping https://facebook.com/ThinLinc
Phone: +46-13-214600 https://plus.google.com/+CendioThinLinc

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

Karan, Dejan

unread,
Nov 20, 2018, 8:55:24 AM11/20/18
to Pierre Ossman, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support

I forgot to add, this is regardless if I'm connected to vncserver or not.


I've used htop, here is the screen screenshot this morning



Here is the screens

shutter


From: Pierre Ossman <oss...@cendio.se>
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2018 3:20 AM
To: Karan, Dejan; TigerVNC User Discussion/Support
Subject: Re: [tigervnc-users] Tiger VNC Memory consumption
 

Brian Hinz

unread,
Nov 20, 2018, 9:15:11 AM11/20/18
to Karan, Dejan, Pierre Ossman, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support
It looks like you have 5 separate Xvnc processes all bound to the same rfb port.  I’m surprised that you are able to connect at all.

-brian

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TigerVNC User Discussion/Support" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tigervnc-user...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to tigervn...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tigervnc-users/494b991a85094b3b83bde9330a777d17%40umsl.edu.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Pierre Ossman

unread,
Nov 20, 2018, 9:31:34 AM11/20/18
to Karan, Dejan, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support
On 11/20/18 2:55 PM, Karan, Dejan wrote:
> I forgot to add, this is regardless if I'm connected to vncserver or not.
>
>
> I've used htop, here is the screen screenshot this morning
>
> [cid:25b47dd5-219f-48b5-9564-d895276c02de]
>
> Here is the screens
>
> shutter
>

Alright, so we can see a very large part of the allocation is for shared
memory. The shared memory extension of X11 unfortunately suffers from a
flaw where a misbehaving application can get the X server to allocate a
shitload of shared memory. Let's see if we can determine if that is the
case here.

Do you think you can pinpoint which application that might be causing this?

Pierre Ossman

unread,
Nov 20, 2018, 9:33:37 AM11/20/18
to Brian Hinz, Karan, Dejan, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support
On 11/20/18 3:14 PM, Brian Hinz wrote:
> It looks like you have 5 separate Xvnc processes all bound to the same rfb
> port. I’m surprised that you are able to connect at all.
>

Are those perhaps threads rather than individual processes? Modern X
servers split of event handling to separate threads.

Karan, Dejan

unread,
Nov 20, 2018, 9:35:30 AM11/20/18
to Brian Hinz, Pierre Ossman, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support

I did notice htop displays five processes, but they might be threads for additional features. I'm not sure. Top displays just one process.


Here is the xrestop




Here is just top again after restarting the vncserver (8:20am), I'll take another screenshot later today to see how much memory its using.




Just to make sure I'm clear, I'm not using vncserver today, I'm at my desk physically and vncserver service is running with no connections in the backbround.  Also I have two monitors setup.


thanks
Dejan


From: Brian Hinz <bph...@users.sourceforge.net>
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2018 8:14 AM
To: Karan, Dejan
Cc: Pierre Ossman; TigerVNC User Discussion/Support

Karan, Dejan

unread,
Nov 20, 2018, 9:37:53 AM11/20/18
to Pierre Ossman, Brian Hinz, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support

Sorry Pierre, I just saw your response after sending the screenshots. Let me investigate and get back to you.


Dejan


From: Pierre Ossman <oss...@cendio.se>
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2018 8:33:35 AM
To: Brian Hinz; Karan, Dejan
Cc: TigerVNC User Discussion/Support

Subject: Re: [tigervnc-users] Tiger VNC Memory consumption

Henrique Martins

unread,
Nov 20, 2018, 9:48:29 AM11/20/18
to TigerVNC User Discussion/Support, Karan, Dejan
> I did notice htop displays five processes, but they might
> be threads for additional features. I'm not sure. Top
> displays just one process.

Run "pstree -a -p" and you should be able to see whether
they are all children of a given Xvnc or not.

-- Henrique

Pierre Ossman

unread,
Nov 30, 2018, 9:54:02 AM11/30/18
to Karan, Dejan, Brian Hinz, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support
On 20/11/2018 15:35, Karan, Dejan wrote:
>
> Here is the xrestop
>
> [cid:10691883-7eea-4914-a224-9898a5bf5f2f]
>
> Here is just top again after restarting the vncserver (8:20am), I'll take another screenshot later today to see how much memory its using.
>
> [cid:4c8dc149-aef3-43a2-9702-9f57cb1c7e42]
>

Nothing abnormal about those numbers. Did you have another snapshot of
how things look once it has started consuming a lot of memory?

Karan, Dejan

unread,
Dec 1, 2018, 12:20:07 PM12/1/18
to Pierre Ossman, Brian Hinz, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support

Yes, here is the screenshoot after running the service for 24 hrs




and here is the process tree. 




From: Pierre Ossman <oss...@cendio.se>
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2018 8:54:01 AM
To: Karan, Dejan; Brian Hinz
Cc: TigerVNC User Discussion/Support

Subject: Re: [tigervnc-users] Tiger VNC Memory consumption

Pierre Ossman

unread,
Dec 3, 2018, 4:29:35 AM12/3/18
to Karan, Dejan, Brian Hinz, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support
On 01/12/2018 18:20, Karan, Dejan wrote:
> Yes, here is the screenshoot after running the service for 24 hrs
>
>
> [cid:cc6f88c4-39c9-40b6-b681-790e3467be42]
>
>
> and here is the process tree.
>
>
> [cid:d5ceb850-3da0-4e50-8d71-9f93603c6fcf]
>

And what does xrestop say when this much memory is used? Is it also in
the gigabyte range? We need to figure out what type of resource is being
consumed.

Karan, Dejan

unread,
Dec 4, 2018, 9:12:46 AM12/4/18
to Pierre Ossman, Brian Hinz, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support

I ran the xrestop after running vncserver service unused for 24 hrs. I have a desktop background image rotation on both screens.

Here is the screenshot of the xrestop:



From: Pierre Ossman <oss...@cendio.se>
Sent: Monday, December 3, 2018 3:29:34 AM

To: Karan, Dejan; Brian Hinz
Cc: TigerVNC User Discussion/Support
Subject: Re: [tigervnc-users] Tiger VNC Memory consumption

Pierre Ossman

unread,
Dec 4, 2018, 9:15:33 AM12/4/18
to Karan, Dejan, Brian Hinz, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support
On 04/12/2018 15:08, Karan, Dejan wrote:
> I ran the xrestop after running vncserver service unused for 24 hrs. I have a desktop background image rotation on both screens.
>
> Here is the screenshot of the xrestop:
>
> [cid:abef1624-1a48-46fa-bae2-279b5441d551]
>

Alright, so that shows just 200 MiB allocated. But I guess you are
seeing gigabytes in top right now?

Karan, Dejan

unread,
Dec 4, 2018, 9:26:13 AM12/4/18
to Pierre Ossman, Brian Hinz, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support

Yes, 9.23 GB out of 12 GB





From: Pierre Ossman <oss...@cendio.se>
Sent: Tuesday, December 4, 2018 8:15:31 AM

To: Karan, Dejan; Brian Hinz
Cc: TigerVNC User Discussion/Support
Subject: Re: [tigervnc-users] Tiger VNC Memory consumption

Pierre Ossman

unread,
Dec 4, 2018, 9:34:03 AM12/4/18
to Karan, Dejan, Brian Hinz, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support
On 04/12/2018 15:25, Karan, Dejan wrote:
> Yes, 9.23 GB out of 12 GB
>
>
> [cid:6dbdb6e0-c960-44c0-9546-0c499a0d8ef9]
>

Alright, so we can rule out normal X11 resource usage then...

Do you think it is possible for you to test a different desktop
environment and see if that also gets the same issue?

Karan, Dejan

unread,
Dec 4, 2018, 10:48:34 AM12/4/18
to Pierre Ossman, Brian Hinz, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support


Sounds good, I'll get the xfce desktop env going.

Thanks
Dejan



From: Pierre Ossman <oss...@cendio.se>
Sent: Tuesday, December 4, 2018 8:34:01 AM

To: Karan, Dejan; Brian Hinz
Cc: TigerVNC User Discussion/Support
Subject: Re: [tigervnc-users] Tiger VNC Memory consumption

Karan, Dejan

unread,
Dec 6, 2018, 10:14:03 AM12/6/18
to Pierre Ossman, Brian Hinz, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support

Pierre,

I had xfce desktop installed and  vnc server running all night, however it is still consuming memory the same way as it did in KDE. 

Another thing I tried is to completely disable window manager and just boot into terminal session (Level 3 in the grub). Same issue after just running the service for 20 minutes. 

Dejan


From: Karan, Dejan
Sent: Tuesday, December 4, 2018 9:48:31 AM
To: Pierre Ossman; Brian Hinz

Pierre Ossman

unread,
Dec 7, 2018, 4:02:22 AM12/7/18
to Karan, Dejan, Brian Hinz, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support
On 12/6/18 4:11 PM, Karan, Dejan wrote:
> Pierre,
>
> I had xfce desktop installed and vnc server running all night, however it is still consuming memory the same way as it did in KDE.
>

Did you verify that Xfce was started in the VNC session? Our startup
isn't terribly clever so it will not follow the same settings as a local
login.

If it does indeed happen with Xfce as well, then that would suggest it
is an application triggering this rather than the desktop environment.
Perhaps you can start an even more minimal session? E.g. just xterm.

> Another thing I tried is to completely disable window manager and just boot into terminal session (Level 3 in the grub). Same issue after just running the service for 20 minutes.
>

I don't think the local session should influence what happens in VNC. Or
did you do some modifications to the VNC startup as well?

Karan, Dejan

unread,
Dec 7, 2018, 9:26:04 AM12/7/18
to Pierre Ossman, Brian Hinz, TigerVNC User Discussion/Support

Hi Pierre,

thanks for your help with this, however I think I'll just ssh and start the vncserver whenever I need the remote session to my deskop. Thanks!


Dejan


From: Pierre Ossman <oss...@cendio.se>
Sent: Friday, December 7, 2018 3:02:20 AM

To: Karan, Dejan; Brian Hinz
Cc: TigerVNC User Discussion/Support
Subject: Re: [tigervnc-users] Tiger VNC Memory consumption

kar...@umsl.edu

unread,
Apr 8, 2019, 8:28:10 AM4/8/19
to TigerVNC User Discussion/Support
Just FYI, after many system updates, the VNC service memory consumption did not grow anymore. It appears to have been fixed along the way. Currently I'm using KDE plasma ver: 5.15.3, KDE Frameworks ver: 5.56.0 and Kernel 4.14.109-1

kar...@umsl.edu

unread,
Apr 8, 2019, 8:29:41 AM4/8/19
to TigerVNC User Discussion/Support
And tigervnc 1.9.0-1.
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages