Connie, Troy, Stephen,

Thanks for the help and quick replies!

Out of all of this, I'm guessing there may be some correlation to the 
program called Root (what a name for a linux based program! :-)).  It 
appears that systems which were rebooted seemed to remain stable unless 
Root was used, after which point memory usage would increase with time 
even though Root was closed for a long time.

I will try installing different versions of Root and see if that helps. 
  Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

In any case, here are answers to most of the questions:

1) What is running (listed in descending order of mem usage):

python, nautilus, gnome-terminal, eggcups, gnome-panel, mixer_applet2, 
wnck-applet, stickynotes_applet, gnome-system-monitor, 
gnome-settings-daemon, gnome-session, gdict-applet, 
mini_commander_applet, clock-applet, multiload-applet-2, 
gnome-netstatus-applet, notification-area-applet, gnome-volume-manager, 
metacity, gnome-vfs-daemon, pam-panel-icon, gconfd-2, 
bonobo-activation-server, xscreensaver, dbus-daemon-1, ssh-agent (4 of 
these), dbus-launch, gam_server, gnome-keyring-daemon, mapping daemon.

2) What is installed outside of Scientific Linux:

-nVidia display driver 1.0-8762
-nVidia nForce chipset driver 1.0-0310
-Flash player 7
-Root version 5.11.02_SLC3_amd64.gcc3.4.3 (downloaded from root.cern.ch)
-Adobe reader 7.0.5-1

3) RPM database integrity: I ran "rpm -Va" and didn't see anything 
obvious (a few "missing" entries in the left column, but they seemed to 
be for .../tmp/...).

4) User related issues: this does not seem to be the problem -- the 
memory usage remains the same when logged in as a brand new user 
(created new user account with no special settings, logged out of old 
and into new, then added system monitor applet to panel to observe mem use).

5) What "free -m" reports:  The system was rebooted so we will have to 
wait before we get some meaningful info here.

6) Swap usage:  no swap space is being used now (although this is after 
a reboot and Root has not been running).

Lastly, I was wondering if there was a bug in the System Monitor 
(Process Listing tab) -- it reports memory usage in MB, but there is no 
way to fit all of what is being reported (~3000 MB) into the amount of 
RAM I have (1024 MB), and the swap space is empty.  Should it be 
reporting kB instead of MB?

Thanks again for the help.



Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> On 5/29/06, Michael Malik <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have installed SL 4.3 x86_64 on several different systems and I have
>> noticed that the memory being used keeps growing each day.  I looked at
>> the system monitor applet in gnome (double-clicked the memory monitor)
>> and noticed that there are a large number of programs taking up about
>> the same amount of memory (today this is around 135 MB each -- python
>> tops the list at 203 MB usage, followed by nautilus at 173 MB, and then
>> gnome-terminal at 166 MB, then the rest at about 135 MB).  Looking at
>> usage in "top" I see the same thing.  This memory usage is having a
>> serious impact on system performance and the only cure we have at the
>> moment is to reboot every day.
>>
>> The hardware we are using is: AMD Athlon 64 3200+, nVidia 6600 PCIE,
>> Seagate 250 MB 7200.8, MSI K8N Neo4 f, 1 GB DDR PC3200 Corsair 
>> ValueSelect.
>>
> 
> I have not seen any sort of memory problems with upstream 4.3. I think
> that the following would need to be done.. what is exactly running on
> the system. Programs taking up the same memory size can be from forks.
> Gnome terminal will grow depending on the fonts being used and the
> size of the scroll back buffer and the number of windows/tabs being
> used.
> 
> My list of other checks would be:
>  find out what is installed on the system that is outside of Scientific 
> Linux
>  find out the integrity of the RPM database (rpm -Va and look for non
> config files being changed) [just in case the box has an unwelcome
> visitor]
>  find out if a new user without any configuration changes has these
> issues. The user related issues I have seen have been where someone
> turned on all the bells and whistles in Gnome configuration and didnt
> realize the effects it might have (oooh I want UTF-32 fonts, 1,000,000
> line scrollback, and 10 tabs in gnome-terminal).
> 
> 
>> So my question is: does anyone know if this is a memory leak or some
>> kind of bug in gnome, the kernel, or perhaps something else?  Thanks!
>>
> 
>