restart Xorg? | fedora 32 | mem leak?

Sam Varshavchik sam.varshavchik at gmail.com
Thu Feb 18 23:52:10 UTC 2021


On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 11:48 AM Tom <xorg at zq3q.org> wrote:
>
> After a week or two Xorg grows -- last time to about 3.6GB. How may I restart
> Xorg with out rebooting, or disturbing my current session?
>
> --
> thanks,
> Tom
>
> --
> systemctl restart display-manager # works, but I have to restart all my graphical tools

The problem here might be due to those same X clients and tools being sloppy.

Many years ago I discovered that the input method server was creating
a new atom for every new input method client. It never reuses atoms of
disconnected clients. Once created, the server keeps these atoms
forever, until the server is restarted. That's what X11 specifies.

I reported this, but they were not interested in fixing their logic.
Most high level widget toolkits implement an interface to the input
method server for you. They connect to the IM server when the
application starts. Grand total: each X client you start ends up with
a new atom getting created.

It's unlikely that this would amount to multiple gigabytes, over a
course of a week, but every little bit, like that, contributes to the
memory footprint of the X server.


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