Bug 157566 – [GTK] NetworkProcess from WebKitGtk+ 2.12.2 exhausts all the RAM memory and system gets unresponsive while swapping

• Status: NEW
• Component: WebKitGTK

[Andres Gomez Garcia]

I'm using WebKitGtk+ with my own JHBuild setting:
https://github.com/tanty/jhbuild-epiphany/tree/master

Epiphany 3.20.1 and WebKit 2.12.2

I'm running Epiphany with the dconf key:

"process-model" = "shared-secondary-process"

The compilation was done with CMake args:

'-DPORT=GTK -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS_RELEASE="-O0 -g1 -DNDEBUG -DG_DISABLE_CAST_CHECKS" -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE="-O0 -g1 -DNDEBUG -DG_DISABLE_CAST_CHECKS"'

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After a couple of days running, eventually, the whole desktop freezes as the system starts to swap memory continuously.

In my case, the NetworkProcess exhausted all my memory: 8 Gb RAM and 8 Gb swap while top was showing ~50Gb of VIRT memory used.

This bug is not reproducible in a predictable way.

[Andres Gomez Garcia]

Just now I killed a couple of NetworkProcess:

* First one, compiled from my JHBuild. Lot's of tabs. It was claiming ~90Gb in VIRT memory.
* Second one, from the Debian Testing package. One single and simple tab, it was claiming ~30Gb in VIRT memory.

When closing every of them, several Gbs of memory were freed from RAM and swap. I really think there has to be some leak. Maybe in the NetworkProcess, maybe in the WebProcess, as I killed it also afterwards and also frees tons of memory but it is clear to me that the memory consumption keeps growing with time without the need of doing much interaction.