Bug#605078: pulseaudio: creates large SHM that use up lots of memory

[James Andrewartha]

Package: pulseaudio
Version: 0.9.21-3
Severity: normal


I was wondering why my kernel caches were so large even after running
echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches, and a friend mentioned that SHM is
counted in that total. So I had a look in /dev/shm and this is what I found:

-r-------- 1 trs80 trs80 65M Nov 27 11:19 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-1016564959
-r-------- 1 trs80 trs80 65M Nov 22 08:24 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-1034082074
-r-------- 1 trs80 trs80 65M Nov 27 11:54 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-1608618112
-r-------- 1 trs80 trs80 65M Nov 27 11:27 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-3319920865
-r-------- 1 trs80 trs80 65M Nov 21 20:00 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-3461827842
-r-------- 1 trs80 trs80 65M Nov 27 11:27 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-3641898353
-r-------- 1 trs80 trs80 65M Nov 27 11:58 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-378896967
-r-------- 1 trs80 trs80 65M Nov 27 11:02 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-657497894
-r-------- 1 trs80 trs80 65M Nov 27 09:27 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-996492698

lsof shows they belong to various processes:

COMMAND     PID  USER  FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF     NODE NAME
update-no  3259 trs80 mem    REG   0,16 67108904  4695743 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-1034082074
pulseaudi  3282 trs80 mem    REG   0,16 67108904     9853 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-378896967
gnome-ter  3465 trs80 mem    REG   0,16 67108904 10173280 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-1016564959
nautilus   3746 trs80 mem    REG   0,16 67108904 10183885 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-3319920865
gnome-pan  3763 trs80 mem    REG   0,16 67108904 10184516 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-3641898353
xchat-gno  4314 trs80 mem    REG   0,16 67108904    21258 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-657497894
iceape-bi 10447 trs80 mem    REG   0,16 67108904  3991151 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-3461827842
empathy   30845 trs80 mem    REG   0,16 67108904  3741097 /dev/shm/pulse-shm-996492698

free -m:
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1248       1197         51          0          9        570
-/+ buffers/cache:        616        632
Swap:          956        226        730

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-tuxonice.3.2-rc1
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages pulseaudio depends on:
ii  adduser                       3.112      add and remove users and groups
ii  consolekit                    0.4.1-4    framework for defining and trackin
ii  libasound2                    1.0.23-2.1 shared library for ALSA applicatio
ii  libc6                         2.11.2-7   Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libcap2                       1:2.19-3   support for getting/setting POSIX.
ii  libdbus-1-3                   1.2.24-3   simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libgdbm3                      1.8.3-9    GNU dbm database routines (runtime
ii  libice6                       2:1.0.6-2  X11 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  libltdl7                      2.2.6b-2   A system independent dlopen wrappe
ii  libpulse0                     0.9.21-3   PulseAudio client libraries
ii  libsamplerate0                0.1.7-3    Audio sample rate conversion libra
ii  libsm6                        2:1.1.1-1  X11 Session Management library
ii  libsndfile1                   1.0.21-3   Library for reading/writing audio 
ii  libspeexdsp1                  1.2~rc1-1  The Speex extended runtime library
ii  libudev0                      164-2      libudev shared library
ii  libx11-6                      2:1.3.3-3  X11 client-side library
ii  libxtst6                      2:1.1.0-3  X11 Testing -- Record extension li
ii  lsb-base                      3.2-23.1   Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  udev                          164-2      /dev/ and hotplug management daemo

Versions of packages pulseaudio recommends:
ii  gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio      0.10.24-1  GStreamer plugin for PulseAudio
pn  libasound2-plugins            <none>     (no description available)
ii  pulseaudio-esound-compat      0.9.21-3   PulseAudio ESD compatibility layer
ii  pulseaudio-module-x11         0.9.21-3   X11 module for PulseAudio sound se

Versions of packages pulseaudio suggests:
ii  paman                         0.9.4-1    PulseAudio Manager
ii  paprefs                       0.9.9-2    PulseAudio Preferences
ii  pavucontrol                   0.9.9-1    PulseAudio Volume Control
ii  pavumeter                     0.9.3-1    PulseAudio Volume Meter
ii  pulseaudio-utils              0.9.21-3   Command line tools for the PulseAu

-- no debconf information