"Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Having had the privilege to use the Summit N900 for almost a month now, I'd like to discuss how to handle "Out of memory" errors and UI freezes that sometimes occur on the N900. (extras-testing enabled and apps in use).

From time to time, the device gives "out of memory errors". Sometimes the message can be ignored, other times the battery has to be removed. I have been assuming apps from extras-testing is the primary cause. How to optimally troubleshoot this?

The crash reporter is useful for crashes, but not for UI freezes. How does one trace the origins of temporary (say, 5-10 sec) or permanent UI freezes (where a reboot is necessary)? How to find out whether this is simply a result of memory shortage, that would/should not happen without apps from extras-testing? UI freezes are also hard to bug report, like this one. And what to do when cpu usage generally is high without any obvious reason, or when the OS gets sluggish?

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

The whole concept of "out of memory" seems odd as I have never seen a Linux machine EVER do that. That includes desktop machines with half the RAM and SWAP that the N900 has and running in a higher resolution AND running KDE!

Perhaps this is related to root filling up as that is the only thing I have seen take a Linux box down, other than when the nVidia drivers were flaky.

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Well, just keep top running in the x-terminal will tell you many things
about memory consumed etc. Basically, upon enabling extras-testing there is kind of checklist that is preferably being used after installing new app, including performance and memory hog monitoring.

Esp when UI is stuck, it is useful to ssh to the device and have a poke what's up in there, is there mem shortage, or just CPU is 100% somewhere in a deadlock.

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

So is this really because of extras-testing? Or do some of the regular apps cause problems like this too? :O

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

I'm also one of the lucky ones with N900 and haven't seen any "Out of memory" messages. I have also installed many programs from extras testing so it should not come from default applications.

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Cool. Have you gotten the N900 to run out of memory by just opening a _lot_ of applications? I'd love to know how many browsers you can open side by side without slowing down the system before everything bogs down or the phone just crashes...

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

The 'Out of Memory' message is due to the rootfs filling up. This can happen if you are installing applications from extras-testing that take large amounts of space and aren't optified.

the root partition can also fill up if a bunch of apps are quickly installed and uninstalled. there is a BZ tracking that issue already. Rebooting seems to be the workaround at the moment.

I have experienced OS sluggishness a couple of times in the past 4 weeks. I think this happens because of apps leaking memory and if I haven't rebooted in a while.
I wonder why apps like modest, camera-ui, browserd each use about 20mb of memory even when they are not open.

Anywya, Xorg runs with a log file in /tmp/Xorg.0.log. It may provide helpful information when reporting bugs related to UI slowdown.

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

At one time, I had a lot of apps open without experiencing any significant issues (http://pi.pe/uges3q). The number-of-browsers count would depend on the resource taken by the webpages javascript/flash etc. facebook and gmail work fine together.

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

How about Maemo Talk + Facebook + Gmail + Wave + a few more forums + music player (playing in the background) + a Youtube video or two?

Pretty much day-to-day usage... are there any problems with that? :)

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

this seems indeed to apply in my case. especially the 'quickly installed and uninstalled' thing - i've tried a lot of programs for a short time, even some from extras-devel, but was under the impression that a simple uninstall would undo any harm.

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Bugzilla: https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5450

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Rebooting or typing in xterm "killall hildon-desktop hildon-home hildon-status-menu" frees up the lost space.

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Would you really have all that stuff going on at once?
My head would spin.

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Of course. The point of a multitasking-capable OS is that you don't need to close stuff if you're going to be using it every 20 minutes...

Okay, playing two Youtube videos while listening to music in the background isn't exactly productive, but the rest is... well... perfectly normal :)

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

If you send me a Wave invite I will give it a spin ;)

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Used 'em all... quite a few for people in this forum :P. I'll keep you in mind for my next set of invites though :)

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

I have a couple to spare.

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Awesome... guess I'll wait for the test results then :P

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Thanks! archebyte AT gmail DOT com

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

The Wave invite never came in.:rolleyes:

Here is a video I created based on your request http://bit.ly/2XN7o0

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

wave invites don't come instantly, my friend sent me one and google did not send it on until 6 days after my friend sent it me and he swears he sent it on the day he first offered it me.

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Google has to approve you first.

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Wow, that is creepy. :eek:

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Never seen out of memory errors on Linux? I run Linux and Solaris daily and I've seen them on systems of all sizes. Memory leaks, overly verbose log files, etc. With today's applications 256MB RAM/768MB swap or 256MB root is very easy to go through. For optimal stability and performance developers have to write good code and good developers are hard to find.

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Rebooting does, but the killall command only releases some of the lost space as there are other processes still mmapping previous versions of the icon cache.

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Dude, you F****** rock. Thank you! :)

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

An invite for Google Wave is very welcome here ;) johanch at gmail dot com. Thanks!

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Nice video, but dude, PLEASE, next time ask someone to hold the camera. The forum still wobbles.

Also, I've tried it too. It's so nice and smooth I forget open windows, by the time I'm at 6 or so it hits me I'm no longer on my overclocked quad core and start closing them. I never expected a 600 MHz (even ARM) to deliver this.

Again, nice demo. Thanks.

--

Oh, and, I also get random slows and freezes, but it's in sessions, like the device half-reboots. Reboot device, fine, again, fine. At some point, it's slow as heck, the desktop transitions are not smooth, apps hang for a second, stuff like that.

Rebooting + remove battery then start again cures it.

I have 88% usage in rootfs, and quite a bit of free memory (100M+, 8 M swapped). Odd.

Maybe it's a coincidence, but it started after adding a bunch of videos in various formats. I'm thinking media daemon.

Top is unhelpful, there's an app spiking (don't remember what it's called, it has a CLI with --log or force log and no fork. MAYBE it's the media daemon)

Re: "Out of memory" and UI freezes on N900
 

Finally caught it off-guard and used a htop with it.

Memory is full to the brim by the 7 instances of browserd that makes everything else swap out. Each use 9.7% of the system's memory.

Restarting... No use

/usr/sbin/browserd -s 1664 -n RTComMessagingServer

and then more underneath, with lower usage.

Started Angry birds to make it swap out, they were a bit unhappy at first (angry?), but after exiting htop reported 169 M used, with browserds dropprd to some 6% or so.

Are those the instances rendering the conversations? If so, what's taking so long, it's not like it's a long job I don't have that many conversations.

Maybe it's that and the media daemon daemoning.