Memory over-consumption: gnome-shell? google-chrome? slack?

Question

I am having issues on a ubuntu 19.04 computer: regular freezes, ...

Monitoring screenshots (htop)

During a memory overload...

(Unfortunately I didn't think of hiding userland threads on the 1^st, sorry for all the duplicate lines)

After a fresh boot, with no app launched...

After a fresh boot, with only google chrome launched...

After a fresh boot, with only slack launched...

Details

From what I understand, it could be a memory problem with gnome-shell, google chrome, or slack, ...

On the "memory overload" screenshot, it seems like gnome-shell was consuming ~40% of memory. Is it normal behavior?

Here is the gnome-shell version

$ gnome-shell --version
GNOME Shell 3.32.0

Here are the installed gnome-shell extensions:

elouan_keryell-even@baume:~$ ls -al ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions
total 12
drwxrwxr-x 3 elouan_keryell-even elouan_keryell-even 4096 juin   5 15:15 .
drwx------ 3 elouan_keryell-even elouan_keryell-even 4096 juin   6 12:06 ..
drwxrwxr-x 4 elouan_keryell-even elouan_keryell-even 4096 juin   5 15:15 desktop-icons@csoriano

As for Google Chrome, here is its version: 73.0.3683.103-1

No, something is really wrong. Either with GNOME extensions, or with Chrome. You're swapping like crazy. Edit your question and show me ls -al ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions. Also, reboot, and then show me htop BEFORE using Chrome. Are you using a beta of Chrome? — heynnema, Jun 05 '19 at 17:19
@heynnema I added chrome version to the question. I don't remember having installed a beta version, but maybe it is. Also, Imma add info on gnome-shell extensions. — Elouan Keryell-Even, Jun 06 '19 at 10:05
Related: Google Chrome will take up my memory to the point where it causes my computer to freeze to a near halt. What can I do to prevent this? — WinEunuuchs2Unix, Jun 06 '19 at 11:26
@heynnema ok I added a htop screenshot from just-after-boot. — Elouan Keryell-Even, Jun 06 '19 at 11:38
Do you use slack? It's beta software, and it's not sandboxed. Now start Chrome and then using htop, monitor to see if a bunch of gnome-shell processes show up, or a bunch of chrome processes show up. Also try with slack. Chrome needs update/reinstall as it's an older, possibly field test or beta version. Report back. — heynnema, Jun 06 '19 at 14:15
@heynnema I added the requested screenshots. Also, I upgraded chrome to the latest available version: 75.0.3770.80 — Elouan Keryell-Even, Jun 10 '19 at 17:59
@WinEunuuchs2Unix I installed chrome extension "The Great Suspender", as per this answer: https://askubuntu.com/a/817971/412393 — Elouan Keryell-Even, Jun 10 '19 at 18:01
@ElouanKeryell-Even except for the first screenshot, everything looks normal. So you're going to have to run as normal, monitoring htop, until you see multiple instances of gnome-shell, and lots of swap being used. If Chrome is a beta/field test, remove it and install a standard version. — heynnema, Jun 10 '19 at 19:03

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 26 '22 at 20:55

ps_mem

I found ps_mem (a Python script) really useful to debug this kind of issues.

Download the ps_mem script, chmod u+x it, open to read it, and if you find it trustworthy just sudo ./ps_mem.py.

You can then use it several ways, like listing by user:

for i in $(ps -e -o user= | sort | uniq); do   printf '%-20s%10s\n' $i $(sudo ./ps_mem.py --total -p $(pgrep -d, -u $i)); done | sort -rn -k2 -t' '

Or a certain user, like root or your user ($USER):

sudo ./ps_mem.py -p $(pgrep -d, -u $USER)

In your case, I would move to Brave (Chromium based, like Ungoogled Chromium) or Firefox, remove any unnecessary extensions (both on GNOME Shell and browser). Also check if you really need to have mysqld running all the time. Maybe consider using podman (better than docker) for temporary projects.