Memory leaks - Now way over the top

[Znurre]

Algaros fight today... everything was fine until a big green army came.
My game totally froze, and when I had waited for 10 minutes and the game did not display one more frame and my harddisk activity was constant I tried to switch to vt1 and run free -m > free.log

After a kernel panic, I checked the content... it's devastating

Znurre:/home/Znurre # cat /root/free.log
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1002        992         10          0          0          4
-/+ buffers/cache:        987         15
Swap:         1027       1027          0

I was running only KDE, Mumble and Regnum.
KDE usually takes around 300MB of RAM, and I guess Mumble takes at most 100MB, if even that.

This is very, very bad.
It means that Regnum was using around 1.5 - 1.7GB of RAM at this moment.

[padreigh]

Maybe they should adjust theire PC-Requirements to:

2GB Ram (at least) 4GB for mostly unhindered Gameplay
.
.
.
or fix leaks

[Znurre]

Strange thing is that I investigated a bit into this problem today, using bash and ps I captured the memory usage of the Regnum process each 10:th second and created a graph.
The result was very stable...

Memory usage around 600-800MB, depending on the situation.
I really cannot explain this sudden spike I had, but I will continue to capture my memory usage while playing to see if I can locate a source for the problems.

[Froste]

Determining memory usage with ps or top is very tricky, as you know, you can't really make an accurate assumption about it. From a cold boot, the memory will start out low, and the kernel will then allocate memory to whatever needs it, the memory usage doesn't really go down that much even if you quit a process, the kernel only reallocates 'dead' memory when it's needed.

[Mikan]

After small fights or wars my 2GB of RAM is always full, and I only run KDE and a few background applications like IRC. I go from 500MB used to around 2GB used + 500MB of swap used.

Regnum is full of memory leaks but they only seem to happen during fights. I think the biggest leaks exist in the polygon processing engine, and particle effects produce the most polygons.

Try running in safe mode for a day and I bet the memory usage will drop dramatically.

Regards,

[Rockwolf_]

Originally Posted by Froste

Determining memory usage with ps or top is very tricky, as you know, you can't really make an accurate assumption about it. From a cold boot, the memory will start out low, and the kernel will then allocate memory to whatever needs it, the memory usage doesn't really go down that much even if you quit a process, the kernel only reallocates 'dead' memory when it's needed.

True, but both Katiechan and Znurre have SWAP memory in use, and especially for Katiechan who has 2GB of RAM, 500MB is too much. It seems suspicious enough to me.
For me, the game uses almost 2GB of RAM after a while of playing, but this at high resolution with high details.
I am, however, using Arch Linux with no DE installed, so nothing else is really consuming memory.
I have no SWAP usage, so for me it would not really be possible to tell for sure that there is a problem, other than the fact that more memory is being used after a while of playing.

[Mikan]

Originally Posted by Froste

Determining memory usage with ps or top is very tricky, as you know, you can't really make an accurate assumption about it. From a cold boot, the memory will start out low, and the kernel will then allocate memory to whatever needs it, the memory usage doesn't really go down that much even if you quit a process, the kernel only reallocates 'dead' memory when it's needed.

I know what you're talking about, as this is one of my fields of study. However, it's important to note that when considering things like the ever-expanding disk cache, the kernel will not use swap. It only uses swap space when 1) Memory has been maxed out, and 2) The disk cache and other buffers have been reduced to a minimum size to make more room for applications.

In other words, when there is swap space in use, Regnum is the program that is consuming all of the memory, not the kernel, as it only allocates memory for those services when an application (such as Regnum) does not need them, which is disproved by the fact that swap is activated.

Regnum is a gigantic memory hog - no doubt about it.

Regards,

[Znurre]

Originally Posted by Katiechan

Try running in safe mode for a day and I bet the memory usage will drop dramatically.

I have tried this - but it reduces playability, and that's something I am not ready to sacrifice either.
I think I've already tried everything to optimize the memory consumption of Regnum, and found a good balance between memory usage and graphics.

The reason I started this thread was to showcase this huge abnormality in the memory usage, which maybe got been introduced with the last patch.

It's not a constant problem, it was just a big "spike".
Everything was running smooth and suddenly everything froze.

[Angelwinged_Devil]

memory leak, oh yeah, but it seems to have gotten worse with the last update, I've become an fps freak so I have alt+i open all the time, also try to notice what happens if you go into windowed mode and then switch to another application, check cpu% and fps , it didn't do this before the update.

[Znurre]

I managed to reproduce this yesterday.
While attacking the gate at Trelle I had to minimize the window for about 10 minutes to check up some things in Firefox.

When I was done, I restored the window and found myself dead outside the gate with several Alsius players moving in and out from the fort.
Everything was rather smooth, I would say ~20 fps.

I presses ressurect button and suddenly I found myself standing at Trelle save, with 0 frames and I could not do anything.

This time I was faster than the last time, which enabled me to run both a free -m and a ps aux.
These are the results of free -m:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1002        993          9          0          0          6
-/+ buffers/cache:        987         15
Swap:         1027       1027          0

ps aux reported that Regnum was using 1.3GB memory.
At this moment I was running Firefox, KDE, Amarok, Kopete and Regnum.