Ubuntu
poppler package

Evince uses too much memory

Bug #491531 reported by Atanas Atanasov
10
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Poppler
Invalid
High
poppler (Ubuntu)
Incomplete
Medium
Ubuntu Desktop Bugs

Bug Description

Binary package hint: evince

I am running evince 2.28.1-0ubuntu1.2 on Karmic. When keeping several documents (all pdf, ps, dvi work) for a prolonged period of time the viewer starts taking up a lot of memory.

For example, I currently have 2 dvi and 1 ps files open, all relatively small (sizes 9kb, 19kb, 192kb), yet evince takes up 350mb of memory. It does not seem like this is or should be the normal behavior.

See original description
Tags: karmic
Revision history for this message
In , Bugs-freedesktop-org-spam (bugs-freedesktop-org-spam) wrote :

I am not sure how you guys decide priority, so I put it at high. It prevents me from using the software, so according to me it should be blocker.

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In , Albert Astals Cid (aacid) wrote :

Does not happen with the splash backend, reassigning to to cairo backend

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In , Carlos Garcia Campos (carlosgc) wrote :

what poppler version are you using?

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In , PazO (pazoman) wrote :

Version 0.6.4 and
Version 0.8.4 and
Latest from git, about 15 hours ago.

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In , vinipl87 (vinipl87) wrote :

Created an attachment (id=18330)
Image-heavy Microsoft pdf (testcase)

I think the attached pdf file is a good testcase for this bug: in my box, evince takes up to ~840MB of ram memory to open it.

Revision history for this message
In , Bugs-freedesktop-org-spam (bugs-freedesktop-org-spam) wrote :

Created an attachment (id=18413)
Another test case

I recommend testing the bug with 512 mb of memory or less.

Revision history for this message
Atanas Atanasov (thenasko) wrote :

Binary package hint: evince

I am running evince 2.28.1-0ubuntu1.2 on Karmic. When keeping several documents (all pdf, ps, dvi work) for a prolonged period of time the viewer starts taking up a lot of memory.

For example, I currently have 2 dvi and 1 ps files open, all relatively small (sizes 9kb, 19kb, 192kb), yet evince takes up 350mb of memory. It does not seem like this is or should be the normal behavior.

Revision history for this message
Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please try to obtain a valgrind log following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Valgrind and attach the file to the bug report. Please also attach an example file to this bug report. This will greatly help us in tracking down your problem.

Changed in evince (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → Ubuntu Desktop Bugs (desktop-bugs)
importance: Undecided → Low
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Atanas Atanasov (thenasko) wrote :

I am attaching a valgrind log. The activities I performed were as follows:
1. Ran evince a.dvi a.ps (the ps file was obtained via dvips) -- the used memory at this point was around 250mb
2. Scrolled down and zoomed (200%) on a figure in each file -- the used memory reached almost 500mb
3. Closed both evince windows

Let me know if there id anything else I can provide.

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Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

There's no huge leaks indicated by Valgrind. Does epdfviewer exhibit the same behaviour?

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Atanas Atanasov (thenasko) wrote :

Yes, it does behave similarly. I opened a single pdf document and zoomed on a diagram (350%). In result the memory usage reached 140mb.

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Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

This bug is an upstream one and it would be quite helpful if somebody experiencing it could send the bug the to the people writing the software. You can learn more about how to do this for various upstreams at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream. Thanks in advance!

affects: evince (Ubuntu) → poppler (Ubuntu)
Changed in poppler (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → New
Revision history for this message
In , Atanas Atanasov (thenasko) wrote :

I can confirm the bug. I placed a similar report in https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/491531.

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Atanas Atanasov (thenasko) wrote :

I opened an upstream bug -- https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=605948.

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Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

Thanks, but you opened the bug on the wrong bug tracker. This is a poppler bug, so it should be opened at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/enter_bug.cgi

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Atanas Atanasov (thenasko) wrote :

Here are two related bugs. I posted a link to this report in both.
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16878
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17026

Revision history for this message
Atanas Atanasov (thenasko) wrote :

I would also recommend elevating the importance of this bug from Low to Medium. Try testing it on a computer with 512mb memory or less and see what happens. In comparison the minimum system requirements are set to 384mb RAM (see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements). Reading documents is a fairly basic task as far as I see it.

Revision history for this message
tgpraveen (tgpraveen89) wrote :

I would also recommend elevating the importance of this bug from Low to Medium. Try testing it on a computer with 512mb memory or less and see what happens. In comparison the minimum system requirements are set to 384mb RAM (see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements). Reading documents is a fairly basic task as far as I see it.

+1 indeed.

Revision history for this message
Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote :

It's difficult to say if those existing bugs are the same bug or not (there's not really enough information to say if they are). I can't reproduce the issue with the example files on those bug reports either, so they might be obsolete now. Generally, it's better to open your own report rather than piggy-back on to someone else's, unless you're absolutely sure that you're experiencing the same bug.

Upstream will need an example file attached to the bug report. Without that, it will be very difficult for anyone to help you.

Revision history for this message
In , Ric Flomag (ricflomag) wrote :

Created an attachment (id=34251)
Two minimal similar PDF files, one triggers the bug and the other does not

Here is a test case (see attached file isolated-test-case.zip) that properly isolates the bug. The following 2 files were made using Inkscape (ubuntu 9.10). The only difference between them is that the image that they contain was:
 * pasted from another inkscape document (file bug.pdf, 4kb)
 * dropped from nautilus (nobug.pdf, 2.4kb).

Note the different file sizes.
I hope that these files will allow to easily track down what triggers this bug.

This bug might cause a loss of data, because a low resource 5-years-old machine (512Mb RAM) becomes totally unresponsive and the only way to stop evince or evince-thumbnailer is to hard reset the computer.

Regards,
Ric.

Revision history for this message
Pedro Villavicencio (pedro) wrote :

adding the relevant report to lp.

Changed in poppler:
importance: Undecided → Unknown
status: New → Unknown
Changed in poppler (Ubuntu):
status: New → Triaged
importance: Low → Medium
Revision history for this message
In , Ric Flomag (ricflomag) wrote :

Fixed here with poppler 0.14.2 (ubuntu 10.10 beta)

Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater)
Changed in poppler:
importance: Unknown → High
status: Unknown → Invalid
Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater)
Changed in poppler:
importance: High → Unknown
Bug Watch Updater (bug-watch-updater)
Changed in poppler:
importance: Unknown → High
Revision history for this message
madbiologist (me-again) wrote :

Is this still occurring on Ubuntu 14.04 "Trusty Tahr" with poppler 0.24.5-2ubuntu4 ?

Changed in poppler (Ubuntu):
status: Triaged → Incomplete
tags: added: karmic
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