[Opera-Linux] OK, what can I do about Opera's never-ending thirst for memory?!

[Daniel Eckl]

Hi Kenny!

I understand about the missing answer.

I'm no dev, I'm system engineer, so I can only give you hints to hunt
down the cause by logical exclusions, by taking away variables ou of
the story and interpret the results. This obviously would cause lots
of work, but might lead to a hint as well.

If I understood right, you have a local X using nvidia driver, but you
don't use it, but use XVnc only? If that's the case, local X and video
driver is ruled out completely. You might as well stop local X and
unload the nvidia kernel module and it should not be of any
difference. In fact, doing so will rule out local X, so that's a good
start.

So there are three major differences to my working setup: First you
run 64-bit environment and second you use XVnc and third you seem to
use lots of image gallery pages in lots of open tabs.

You can't easily get rid of the 64-bit environment without going
virtual by using vmware/Virtualbox and install a complete independent
32-bit system inside. But still it might be worth a try, perhaps later
on in case we're still stuck.

So lets first focus on the other two points. As far as I understood,
you can reproduce this memory usage with rather low effort, so after
some hours it starts to raise. My first try would be to eliminate the
pages as a cause. Start with up to 5 tabs with a more text-page,
google, forums, webmail, whatever. The standard web user scenario. Try
to reproduce that this way. If it does not occur, then we know it's
triggered by the gallery pages (perhaps just one of them, who knows).
Try to add them one by one and observe. In case memory usage raises
linear, then it would point to your thought about not releasing
pixmaps or such. But perhaps you see a spike in raising when adding a
special site, so you could give the devs a hint which site triggers
that most.

If that doesn't point to a specific site causing the trouble, we could
try to get rid of vnc. Perhaps you might go for nomachine NX to export
your remote desktop. In my eyes, for a X based host, this solution is
hundred times better than any vnc solution. When you are lucky, this
solves the problem, perhaps it's a problem only occuring with vnc X
server. If not, you might have found a better way of remote connect to
your machine. :)
Get it on www.nomachine.com
It might sound complicated at first, but it really isn't. You just
install the nxnode and nxserver packages on the server, and the
nxclient package on the client and it should work without any special
configuration as far as I can remember.

Okay, so far for today, I'm interested in your results.

Best,
Daniel

2009/6/16 Kenneth Crudup <kenny at panix.com>:
>
> On Tue, 16 Jun 2009, Daniel Eckl wrote:
>
>> In March you already complained about that, but after my very serious
>> try to help you, you did not even reply to my mail at all.
>> http://list.opera.com/pipermail/opera-linux/2009-March/009894.html
>> That's why I doubt you _really want_ any help.
>
> Whoa- I missed that completely, I think!
>
> Sorry you thought I was ignoring you. As far as determining the cause,
> for the most part my system is fairly standard, an Ubuntu 9.04 system
> that's really only got their updates on it. I'm running the NVidia
> closed-binary driver, but I have my doubts as to that causing such
> large increases in virtual/resident memory usage (it's so far and away
> bigger than any other of the ~20-odd windows/programs I'd have up and
> running at the time.
>
> I've been running Opera for a few years now (since 2002, anyway) and
> this is the only platform I've seen it on, but it's also the only one
> that's:
>
>  - a 64-bit platform
>  - using the NVidia closed-source drivers
>  - using Compiz
>
> Again, I'd love to have something to send the devs (map usage, the output
> of "inspectr" (is that finally running on the Linux/64 platform) but I
> think in my mind it's just not releasing all the pixmaps (which could be
> related to the display driver), but that's just my wild guess.
>
> I guess I could suffer thru the "nv" driver for a while :) and see what's
> up, but I develop on this system, too, and stuff like that might interfere
> with work.
>
> I have a AMD 64-bit system that's "headless" (i.e., I run the standard
> Ubuntu GNOME desktop on it, but only thru XVnc server), I could maybe
> move over one of the saved session files and run thru that, I guess.
>
>        -Kenny
>
> --
> Kenneth R. Crudup  Sr. SW Engineer, Scott County Consulting, Los Angeles
> O: 3630 S. Sepulveda Blvd. #138, L.A., CA 90034-6809      (888) 454-8181
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