On Sunday, October 24, 2010 04:18:02 stan wrote:
On Sun, 24 Oct 2010 02:38:23 +0100
Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I am experiencing a gradual performance drop problem --- having a
> machine running 24/7, after some time (say, two weeks) the system
> becomes increasingly slow, in terms of desktop response.
<snip>
> The symptoms appear like something is leaking memory --- slowly
> (noticable only after two weeks of continuous running), but
> cumulatively.
This probably isn't much help, but what happens if you log out when it
starts to slow, stop X, and then start X? I mean, go to runlevel 3,
then back to runlevel 5. If everything is OK again, it tells you that
the problem is in X. If it isn't, the problem is in the system part,
the OS.
Just tried it, logged out and logged back in. Didn't go to runlevel 3, X gets
restarted with only logging out and in, AFAIK.
Anyway, you seem to be right! Restarting X purged most of the swap, from
1.3 GB it went down to 31.4 MB. And the system regained responsiveness.
So apparently something inside X is leaking memory. But X has many components
--- compiz, emerald, KDE, Xorg, intel driver, etc., so any idea how do I
diagnose this further?
I mean, I can restore the system either by reboot or logging out/in, but I'd
like to know what is the actual cause of this end eliminate *that*. Hopefully
I would like to correct whatever is wrong so that I don't need to get into the
situation of having to reboot or relogin myself again.
I am open to suggestions on how to proceed in troubleshooting this further. If
anything, my system will become slow again in a week or two... ;-)
Thanks for the help, any further advice appreciated!
Best, :-)
Marko