geary on Ubuntu 18.10: large virtual memory consumption reported
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Ubuntu 18.10 top reports a large consumption of virtual memory by Geary. What is going on here?
17194 stephen 20 0 *99.5g* 814024 88196 S 0.3 10.0 88:12.44 geary
geary
asked Nov 6 at 20:38
Stephen Boston
6992618
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Ubuntu 18.10 top reports a large consumption of virtual memory by Geary. What is going on here?
17194 stephen 20 0 *99.5g* 814024 88196 S 0.3 10.0 88:12.44 geary
geary
asked Nov 6 at 20:38
Stephen Boston
6992618
add a comment |
up vote
1
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favorite
up vote
1
down vote
favorite
Ubuntu 18.10 top reports a large consumption of virtual memory by Geary. What is going on here?
17194 stephen 20 0 *99.5g* 814024 88196 S 0.3 10.0 88:12.44 geary
geary
asked Nov 6 at 20:38
Stephen Boston
6992618
Ubuntu 18.10 top reports a large consumption of virtual memory by Geary. What is going on here?
17194 stephen 20 0 *99.5g* 814024 88196 S 0.3 10.0 88:12.44 geary
geary
geary
asked Nov 6 at 20:38
Stephen Boston
6992618
asked Nov 6 at 20:38
Stephen Boston
6992618
asked Nov 6 at 20:38
Stephen Boston
6992618
asked Nov 6 at 20:38
Stephen Boston
6992618
asked Nov 6 at 20:38
Stephen Boston
6992618
6992618
add a comment |
add a comment |
1 Answer
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It could be memory leaks if Geary has been running for a long time, and so the leaked memory is getting paged to swap. There are a few around, I fix them whenever I can find them, but also compiling Geary against newer versions of vala generally helps.
It is more likely to be the WebKit Gigacage however, which is a security feature that makes it harder for attackers to run malicious code on your computer. It does this by pre-allocating several large (32G) chunks of virtual memory for storing different kinds of web page data separately. Even though it allocates these large chunks, very little of it gets actually used - just enough to display pages.
Since Geary uses WebKitGTK to render email (even plain text email), it will have a number of Gigacages allocated when it starts up. You can confirm this by comparing virtual memory size of other apps that also use WebKitGTK, such as GNOME Web, or by looking at Geary's virtual memory size right after starting it up.
Virtual memory is used for pre-allocations like this, for memory mapping files, and a bunch of other things that don't actually use any memory. So it isn't a very useful metric for determining how much memory a program is using and it's not worth worrying about. Keep an eye on a program's resident set size and the amount of swap being used instead.
answered Nov 25 at 22:35
Michael Gratton
1115
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1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
up vote
1
down vote
accepted
It could be memory leaks if Geary has been running for a long time, and so the leaked memory is getting paged to swap. There are a few around, I fix them whenever I can find them, but also compiling Geary against newer versions of vala generally helps.
It is more likely to be the WebKit Gigacage however, which is a security feature that makes it harder for attackers to run malicious code on your computer. It does this by pre-allocating several large (32G) chunks of virtual memory for storing different kinds of web page data separately. Even though it allocates these large chunks, very little of it gets actually used - just enough to display pages.
Since Geary uses WebKitGTK to render email (even plain text email), it will have a number of Gigacages allocated when it starts up. You can confirm this by comparing virtual memory size of other apps that also use WebKitGTK, such as GNOME Web, or by looking at Geary's virtual memory size right after starting it up.
Virtual memory is used for pre-allocations like this, for memory mapping files, and a bunch of other things that don't actually use any memory. So it isn't a very useful metric for determining how much memory a program is using and it's not worth worrying about. Keep an eye on a program's resident set size and the amount of swap being used instead.
answered Nov 25 at 22:35
Michael Gratton
1115
add a comment |
up vote
1
down vote
accepted
It could be memory leaks if Geary has been running for a long time, and so the leaked memory is getting paged to swap. There are a few around, I fix them whenever I can find them, but also compiling Geary against newer versions of vala generally helps.
It is more likely to be the WebKit Gigacage however, which is a security feature that makes it harder for attackers to run malicious code on your computer. It does this by pre-allocating several large (32G) chunks of virtual memory for storing different kinds of web page data separately. Even though it allocates these large chunks, very little of it gets actually used - just enough to display pages.
Since Geary uses WebKitGTK to render email (even plain text email), it will have a number of Gigacages allocated when it starts up. You can confirm this by comparing virtual memory size of other apps that also use WebKitGTK, such as GNOME Web, or by looking at Geary's virtual memory size right after starting it up.
Virtual memory is used for pre-allocations like this, for memory mapping files, and a bunch of other things that don't actually use any memory. So it isn't a very useful metric for determining how much memory a program is using and it's not worth worrying about. Keep an eye on a program's resident set size and the amount of swap being used instead.
answered Nov 25 at 22:35
Michael Gratton
1115
add a comment |
up vote
1
down vote
accepted
up vote
1
down vote
accepted
It could be memory leaks if Geary has been running for a long time, and so the leaked memory is getting paged to swap. There are a few around, I fix them whenever I can find them, but also compiling Geary against newer versions of vala generally helps.
It is more likely to be the WebKit Gigacage however, which is a security feature that makes it harder for attackers to run malicious code on your computer. It does this by pre-allocating several large (32G) chunks of virtual memory for storing different kinds of web page data separately. Even though it allocates these large chunks, very little of it gets actually used - just enough to display pages.
Since Geary uses WebKitGTK to render email (even plain text email), it will have a number of Gigacages allocated when it starts up. You can confirm this by comparing virtual memory size of other apps that also use WebKitGTK, such as GNOME Web, or by looking at Geary's virtual memory size right after starting it up.
Virtual memory is used for pre-allocations like this, for memory mapping files, and a bunch of other things that don't actually use any memory. So it isn't a very useful metric for determining how much memory a program is using and it's not worth worrying about. Keep an eye on a program's resident set size and the amount of swap being used instead.
answered Nov 25 at 22:35
Michael Gratton
1115
It could be memory leaks if Geary has been running for a long time, and so the leaked memory is getting paged to swap. There are a few around, I fix them whenever I can find them, but also compiling Geary against newer versions of vala generally helps.
It is more likely to be the WebKit Gigacage however, which is a security feature that makes it harder for attackers to run malicious code on your computer. It does this by pre-allocating several large (32G) chunks of virtual memory for storing different kinds of web page data separately. Even though it allocates these large chunks, very little of it gets actually used - just enough to display pages.
Since Geary uses WebKitGTK to render email (even plain text email), it will have a number of Gigacages allocated when it starts up. You can confirm this by comparing virtual memory size of other apps that also use WebKitGTK, such as GNOME Web, or by looking at Geary's virtual memory size right after starting it up.
Virtual memory is used for pre-allocations like this, for memory mapping files, and a bunch of other things that don't actually use any memory. So it isn't a very useful metric for determining how much memory a program is using and it's not worth worrying about. Keep an eye on a program's resident set size and the amount of swap being used instead.
answered Nov 25 at 22:35
Michael Gratton
1115
edited Nov 25 at 22:47
answered Nov 25 at 22:35
Michael Gratton
1115
answered Nov 25 at 22:35
Michael Gratton
1115
answered Nov 25 at 22:35
Michael Gratton
1115
1115
add a comment |
add a comment |
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