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(KDE) (Stretch) ksmserver using excessive memory.

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steve_v
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(KDE) (Stretch) ksmserver using excessive memory.

#1 Post by steve_v »

As the title states: ksmserver on my bog-standard stretch KDE install is currently using ~7.5GB of memory...
I'm guessing it's this bug, and I see neither a fixed (>=5.8.7) plasma-workspace package, nor a patch in the Debian changelog.
No errors logged in the usual places, no foreign KDE packages (yet)... Just ever increasing memory consumption. (and xembedsniproxy crashes, dolphin hangs, font corruption... other "minor" bugs)
Am I the only one seeing this or what?

Normally I'm happy with the package versions Debian stable ships, but this one is a showstopper for me.
KDE shipped with Stretch is, IMO, a bit of a mess in general, but the DE eating 7GB after 2 days uptime is ridiculous.
Anyone know if a fix is incoming, or should I be switching to something like Neptune, that ships a not-broken KDE5?
Any suggestions?
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Re: (KDE) (Stretch) ksmserver using excessive memory.

#2 Post by bw123 »

do tell... I haven't made the switch, I'm still watching. Running it on a live system and playing around. I noticed more memory use from plasmashell, but nothing like that. I'll take a closer look at ksmserver.

It took the last version until 4.14 to get good. We should be a little patient? It seems the policy now is to publish whatever upstream wants to do, and to heck with the users. rapid development 'R' us.

There are a lot more problems than just KDE though, seems like X, opengl, mesa, and several other what-nots are all having a free for all.

Good Luck.
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Re: (KDE) (Stretch) ksmserver using excessive memory.

#3 Post by steve_v »

I can confirm that this is fixed in plasma 5.10, as included in testing/unstable.
I don't mind being patient for SNS, but IMO this kind of memory leak is something that warrants backporting.

If history is any guide, stable gets a working KDE just before it becomes oldstable.
Kinda pathetic really, I would rather Stretch stayed with KDE4.
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Re: (KDE) (Stretch) ksmserver using excessive memory.

#4 Post by bw123 »

I know it's frustrating, I saw the same posts about KDE3 which was great and they never should have touched it. Gnome should never change, nothing shoudl ever change...

...but you know, there are new things, new hardware so we HAVE to accomodate the new stuff, the new UI concepts that our old hardware (and old OS) won't play nice with.

I think the new plasma is okay so far, I was disappointed by the removal of the activities templates, I liked that. I liked plasma-netbook it is really cool on my little crappy 10 in notebook. Life goes on, we find ways to accomodate the old and welcome the new, it's the cycle of life, dood get a grip, if it needs a backport it WILL GET A BACKPORT.

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Re: (KDE) (Stretch) ksmserver using excessive memory.

#5 Post by steve_v »

bw123 wrote:Life goes on, we find ways to accomodate the old and welcome the new, it's the cycle of life, dood get a grip, if it needs a backport it WILL GET A BACKPORT.
Dood, I'm not talking about some UI change or missing feature here. This is a crippling memory leak that was fixed upstream 4 versions ago, and didn't exist in KDE4 at all.
It's not a "cycle of life" either... Are you suggesting we should all "welcome" more bugs?
I will gladly "welcome the new", when that new actually works properly.
Including only buggy software when both a well tested older release and a fixed newer one are available is just idiotic.
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Re: (KDE) (Stretch) ksmserver using excessive memory.

#6 Post by bw123 »

you sound a little ticked off, and didn't mean to make light of your issue. I really appreciate you taking the time to post on here. Like I said I'm working on getting to a plasma 5 installation myself and I need all the advice I can get.

I can confirm that this is fixed in plasma 5.10, as included in testing/unstable.
So did you switch to testing? I may be confused, but 'four versions ago" was what version? How many times to do expect debian maintainers to build the package to get a stable version? Wouldn't it be better to do it 'the debian way' and wait and see which version has the features we want and THEN d the work?

Until there's a version that supports multiscreen, two separate X screens instead of the lame extended desktop crap it has now, I don't see any point in building a bunch of packages every other day. The compositing doesn't work with two large displays on the same screen, that's why it needs to works with two separate screens. With desktop effects and two monitors on the display is cut off on half of the other screen, that's insane. Why go to the trouble of building that and moving it to stable?
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Re: (KDE) (Stretch) ksmserver using excessive memory.

#7 Post by steve_v »

I did switch to testing. I've been running stable exclusively for years, but Stretch + KDE is a mess. It's an unholy mixture of QT4 and QT5 versions of apps and full of bugs. Even 5.10 in Sid isn't fully built against QT5 yet. :roll:

By "4 versions ago", I mean current plasma = 5.11.x, plasma in Stretch = 5.6.x. More than 4 versions even.
As for the "debian way"... IMO, Stretch should be running KDE4. KDE5 is only approaching a "stable-worthy" state now, and it might be ready for Buster. No need for repeated builds at all, just use that which works already.

I'd be a lot less ticked off if I had a stable KDE on a stable Debian. I don't care exactly what version, but KDE 5.6 sure isn't it.

As for multiple display support, that's a feature request. Feature requests take a backseat to bugs as far as I am concerned.
Rebuild KDE to fix bugs: Sure, sooner rather than later. To add new features: Save it for the next stable.

All things considered, right now I really can't recommend KDE on Debian at all. For the first time in 15 years I'm looking to other distros... For a KDE desktop that doesn't suck.
Then again I may just backport 5.11 myself. Not sure which is going to be more annoying.
Last edited by steve_v on 2017-11-10 00:25, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: (KDE) (Stretch) ksmserver using excessive memory.

#8 Post by bw123 »

As for multiple display support, that's a feature request. Feature requests take a backseat to bugs as far as I am concerned. Rebuild KDE to fix bugs: Sure, sooner rather than later. To add new features: Save it for the next stable.
now that is a copout, because even fluxbox on stretch supports multihead just fine, and KDE has to do it also. That's not a feature request, when I set up my X displays the way I want, the damn desktop has to accomodate. Sheesh...

X is the big dog, DE's are the tail.

It works fine on KDE4. that's why I set it up that way, compositing won't work if the combined screens are larger that 2048.
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Re: (KDE) (Stretch) ksmserver using excessive memory.

#9 Post by bw123 »

https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.8.0.php

NOTE version, date of article is Tuesday, 4 October 2016
Plasma 5.8 LTS. Here for the Long Term.
...developers and designers are happy to recommend Plasma for the widest possible audience be they enterprise or non-techy home users.

from same article, is this what they spent their time on? Do we need to get with wayland?
...our long term support promise does not apply to the fast-evolving Wayland stack, we think it is ready to be tested...
wtf? ok, no LTS for wayland, and Xorg on 5.8 which is LTS is broke, now what?
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Re: (KDE) (Stretch) ksmserver using excessive memory.

#10 Post by sunrat »

steve_v wrote:... I mean current plasma = 5.11.x, plasma in Stretch = 5.6.x. More than 4 versions even....
Minor correction - Plasma in Stretch = 5.8.6-1, in Sid = 5.10.5-2

I'm using current Debian KDE in siduction and it's working very nicely, thank you. :wink:
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Re: (KDE) (Stretch) ksmserver using excessive memory.

#11 Post by steve_v »

sunrat wrote:Minor correction - Plasma in Stretch = 5.8.6-1, in Sid = 5.10.5-2
My mistake, these version numbers are getting confusing. 5.11 - 5.8 is still 3 major, and several minor, versions behind current though.
I'm using current Debian KDE in siduction and it's working very nicely, thank you. :wink:
By the mention of siduction, I assume that's plasma 5.10 from sid? I'd expect that to be free of the bug I'm griping about.

I like that stable doesn't update packages for SNS, I thoroughly dislike that a serious bug like the one I mentioned remains unfixed.
We're at 9.2 now, right? That's 2 point releases that haven't included KDE fixes. If stretch must have this shiny new KDE5 crap, one could at least make sure it works properly.
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Re: (KDE) (Stretch) ksmserver using excessive memory.

#12 Post by sunrat »

steve_v wrote:By the mention of siduction, I assume that's plasma 5.10 from sid? I'd expect that to be free of the bug I'm griping about.
Yes, siduction uses Debian sid repos and is basically sid with custom kernel and a few tweaks and utilities.

I recall KDE4 was not totally satisfactory till 4.10 either.
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Re: (KDE) (Stretch) ksmserver using excessive memory.

#13 Post by None1975 »

steve_v wrote: If stretch must have this shiny new KDE5 crap, one could at least make sure it works properly.
You can always use another DE....
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Re: (KDE) (Stretch) ksmserver using excessive memory.

#14 Post by bw123 »

I got my desktop installed, up and ran it for 36 hours it has three chips, a 1G, a 512M and a 256MB. It's an old DRAM board with a Sempron and a Radeon card. So anyway, that makes 1.75 gigs. I consider those specs fairly puny, but it drives three hard drives, a 40 in TV, and a 21" crt, plays and records music and surfs the net. I do a little gaming, but nothing extreme. Opengl is a mess right now but I'll probably figure it out.

I didn't see any issues with ksmserver yet, but I always tick the "use new session" option in the system settings. I'm not real sure how session management works, but I'm sure it's complicated. That's a good heads up.

KDE is looking really good, seems to run about 450MB of ram and awesome looking. The only way I could get compositing working was arrange the screens top to bottom, which is going to mess me up but it's okay.
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Re: (KDE) (Stretch) ksmserver using excessive memory.

#15 Post by steve_v »

None1975 wrote:You can always use another DE....
Why? I've been using KDE since 1.0.
This is not KDEs fault, it's been fixed. Debian has not shipped said fix.
bw123 wrote:I didn't see any issues with ksmserver yet
This is workload dependent, you won't see it unless something in your session is making a bunch of noise.
As I grok it, ksmserver is buffering and failing to discard client output, so as long as everything else behaves, no problem... or at least not for a while.
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