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I have 2 GB allocated for swap partition and I have 16 GB of RAM. Yet my chromium-browser keeps crashing if I have too many tabs open. How is that possible with 16GB ram? I am running Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit

Vili Toivonen
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  • I have been using websites with chatting functions that use up to 300MB ram alone. Yet it shouldn't crash my whole browser as I still have over 14GB of free ram in use – Vili Toivonen Jul 02 '18 at 15:26
  • Some chat websites can start at 300MB but climb over 1 GB if the page is not refreshed or reloaded. You should read the duplicate link to see exactly how much RAM each site is using. If your question is not a duplicate of that question let me me know by putting @ in front of my name in a comment and I'll retract my close vote. – WinEunuuchs2Unix Jul 02 '18 at 15:30
  • @WinEunuuchs2Unix Using Tab+Esc shows exactly what system monitor does, around 300-400 MB Ram usage on the most exhaustive chromium processes. How ever, on system monitor properties I can see them using 2-5 GB's of Virtual memory each. I still dont understand how this problem only appears when im running chrome (or chromium) on ubuntu and not when I boot in windows 10 – Vili Toivonen Jul 02 '18 at 15:52
  • Firefox is installed by default in Ubuntu, can you try it for awhile and see if the problem persists? If the problem goes away it would be a Chrome / Chromium bug and not related to websites in which case my duplicate vote should be retracted. – WinEunuuchs2Unix Jul 02 '18 at 16:04
  • In chromium's advanced settings do you have hardware acceleration on? If so, try turning it off. – DK Bose Jul 02 '18 at 16:12
  • @DKBose I have tried it both on and off. Each setting gives the same result. – Vili Toivonen Jul 02 '18 at 16:22
  • Did you install the 32-bit or 64-bit (preferred) version? Please advise by clicking on the grey edit link above and add that to your first post. Also, please try installing Chrome from the Google website and then try to replicate the problem. This will tell us if a reinstall of chromium-browser after a complete uninstall would be helpful. – K7AAY Jul 02 '18 at 18:19
  • @K7AAY After a little testing my chromium browser doesnt seem to go down anymore after I created a 30GB Swap partition, since lack of disk space isn't an issue. Although it seems pretty weird that chromium really does consume that much memory. – Vili Toivonen Jul 03 '18 at 12:49
  • Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! Do you experience general system slow-down or unresponsiveness before the crash? Could you please open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), run free -h and ps -auxk-%mem | head when things become sluggish and [edit] your question to include their output? Thanks. – David Foerster Jul 10 '18 at 10:11

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Since creating a Very Large Swap Partition solved the issue, it's clear that Chromium, just like Chrome can do, was using an excessive amount of memory. You may wish to consider trying the Opera browser instead, as it will take Chrome/Chromium extensions yet is more sparing of memory.

K7AAY
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  • Okay, it still crashed under very heavy load. I installed google-chrome instead and it has been working without crashing under heavy load for 4 hours straight now. Its now obvious that it was chromium and its RAM usage that was the cause of this problem. Thank you all for your help! – Vili Toivonen Jul 04 '18 at 15:30