Linux will run out of memory after a few days running?

[Jonds]

Thanks Guys the tips helped a bunch,

@Jonds :-

Just out of curiosity, when you say "browser(s)" AND "lots of tabs".......how many browsers are open at the same time, and just HOW many tabs?

Modern browsers are RAM hogs.....the Chromium-based ones especially. Every single tab runs its own process, and each and every tab can use up anywhere from perhaps 90MB up to around 300+ MB, depending on how "heavy" the specific web-site is.

16GB sounds like a lot of RAM, but when running multiple browsers, and making heavy use of them, it can soon get sucked-up, believe me.

I run with 32GB RAM, yet because I often have multiple browsers open - I re-package a whole bunch of 'em into 'portable' format for the Puppy Linux community - I've often got down to around half my available RAM without really trying.....

I also run a 64GB swap partition on this HP Pavilion desktop rig; I often suspend overnight, and the HP insists on saving the whole of my RAM to a single location, whether it's in use or not; it doesn't like you splitting this up between smaller swap areas.


Mike.

Mostly firefox and chrome, but I collect tabs like magic cards, so I'm trying to stow away the stuff I don't need right now in chrome and keep it closed until I remember it.

Auto Tab Discard.

Helped on both browsers

You may find this tutorial helpful also.

I did this too, it seemed helpful, but wouldn't stop it from happening

 

[Jonds]

Sound more like a memory leak in one of the programs you are using, Linux does memory management and if you are running out of memory the oom killer will start killing programs so that the rest of the system doesn't go down. Are any of the database managers or IDE's you are using written in java, from my experience java programs are more likely to have memory leaks?

I think electron apps are to blame too, VScode and Skype (don't ask) have given me trouble in the past, there are some project that make VSCode blow up its ram usage and skype is just, well, skype...

I try to keep java apps to a minimum, I have to use android studio on rare ocasions, but it really does use more memory than it should specially if left open (at least in my use case), dbeaver on the other hand is pretty much unavoidable to me and it does seem to have some memory leak or it's just heavy overall.

 

[MikeWalsh]

I think electron apps are to blame too, VScode and Skype (don't ask) have given me trouble in the past, there are some project that make VSCode blow up its ram usage and skype is just, well, skype...

@Jonds :-

Oh, you've hit the nail on the head there!

Were you aware of just what Electron IS, and how it works? The Electron framework consists of a stripped-back Chromium browser, with various HTML, CSS, Java and Node.js scripting added. See here:-

Electron (software) framework

And we all know browsers - especially the Chromium-based clones! - are RAM hogs. You have half-a-dozen Electron apps open, you're essentially running half-a-dozen additional browsers..... Nowt to do with memory leaks, they just DO use a heck of a lot of RAM. By design.

I rest my case.

(Skype's a pain in the a** at the best of times. To then go and build it with Electron as well....

shrug...)


Mike.

 

[f33dm3bits]

I think electron apps are to blame too, VScode and Skype (don't ask) have given me trouble in the past, there are some project that make VSCode blow up its ram usage and skype is just, well, skype...

I run a vm with 16G memory and also use VSCodium and teams-for-linux and I have never run out of memory.

 

[Jonds]

I run a vm with 16G memory and also use VSCodium and teams-for-linux and I have never run out of memory.

Do you use some add-ons? I've used VSCodium for a while , but I don't know what are the state of VSCodium addons right now, I my experience most of the memory issues in vscode come from either indexing a large project or some addons that like hogging memory

 

[f33dm3bits]

Do you use some add-ons?

I use the ansible, ansible-vault, vim, yaml extensions.