[GRLUG] pulseaudio using a TON of memory

[John-Thomas Richards]

On Wed, Jun 01, 2011 at 10:39:21AM -0400, John-Thomas Richards wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 01, 2011 at 09:28:19AM -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 8:53 AM, Mike Williams <knightperson at zuzax.com> wrote:
> > > On 06/01/2011 08:43 AM, John-Thomas Richards wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Turns out the zombie apocalypse has begun:
> > >>
> > >> auerbach ~ # ps -el | grep Z
> > >> F S   UID   PID  PPID  C PRI  NI ADDR SZ WCHAN  TTY          TIME CMD
> > >> 0 Z  1000  8688  7177  0  80   0 -     0 -      ?        00:00:01
> > >> pavucontrol<defunct>
> > >>
> > >> Killing pulseaudio freed the RAM (naturally) but it really bugs me that
> > >> it used so much to start with.  Could it be related to the above zombie
> > >> process (pavucontrol is "pulseaudio volume control")?
> > >
> > > Probably. Sounds like a classic runaway process or memory leak. I'm sure
> > > that's not normal operation, but if it keeps happening you'll have to figure
> > > out what needs patching.
> > 
> > Memory leak is what I was thinking, too. That's definitely not normal operation.
> 
> Having restarted pulseaudio just a short while ago, here it is again:
> 
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
> 16050 jtr       20   0  419m 210m 3328 S    1  2.6   0:16.43 pulseaudio     
> 
> There is definitely a memory leak, but it just started.  I don't recall
> Debian Wheezy updating any pulse- related packages recently.  A quick
> check of /var/cache/apt/archives shows the last update of anything
> pulseaudio is two weeks ago (gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio_0.10.29-2_amd64).
> 
> It appears to be a bug in either pulseaudio or one of its libraries but
> it's odd that it's showing up now.

I don't think the leak is in pulseaudio directly.  I realized that the
problem showed up when I switched from Cairo-dock to Avant Window
Navigator (I'm running OpenBox).  As soon as I switched back to
Cairo-dock the problem went away.  It must have something to do with
AWN's volume control.
-- 
john-thomas
------
I hold that gentleman to be the best dress whose dress no one observes.
Anthony Trollope, novelist (1815-1882)

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