[plug] XFree86 - ridiculous memory consumption

[Craig Ringer]

> I've noticed recently that despite having a reasonable amount of RAM,
> my system has been swapping quite a bit.  The culprit appears to be XFree86,
> which is using 200-400mb.  Presumably this isn't normal behaviour. The
> machine is running XFree 4.2.1 with two nvidia cards using the
> standard 'nv' driver. 
> 
> I'm not sure exactly when I first noticed this happening - I might have
> accidentally added Option "hog_memory" to my XF86Config file or something.
> 
> Anyone else seen this happen before, or have any ideas on what might be
> causing this, and how to return X's memory usage to something a
> little more sensible?

Does this memory usage slowly increase over XFree86's lifetime, or is it 
immediately allocated on login? Try quitting all apps except your window 
manager (especially OO.o, GIMP and Mozilla) and see if that brings your 
RAM use under control. I've seen X's memory use somehow driven up by 
other apps, usually the shared memory allocations but sometimes not. Old 
mozilla versions loved to do this.

If it is a slow growth, consider killing the X server, and starting up 
an xterm with top (sorted by RAM usage) in it when you log back in. 
Keeping an eye on that might give you an idea what's causing the problem.

I presume there's a good reason your're using "nv" not the NVidia 
drivers. The NVidia drivers used to be dodgy (didn't like multiple X 
servers running on the same hardware, didn't like APM, used to leak 
memory, etc) but are pretty good now.