Bug#765870: systemd-logind brings system to knees with RAM consumption

[John Goerzen]

I have not yet had the chance to migrate this system to boot with
systemd.  The problem is also not yet resolved.  However, the logind
processes now consume far less RAM:

$ ps auxww | grep logind
root       503  0.0  0.0  28388  2892 ?        S    Nov27   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root      1665  0.0  0.0  28388  2996 ?        S    Nov27   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root      1756  0.0  0.0  28388  2976 ?        S    16:18   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
jgoerzen  3283  0.0  0.0  12720  2252 pts/4    S+   16:56   0:00 grep logind
root      4260  0.0  0.0  28356  2900 ?        S    Nov26   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root      4357  0.0  0.0  28388  2996 ?        S    Nov28   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root      4861  0.0  0.0  28388  2916 ?        S    07:18   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root      4969  0.0  0.0  28388  2924 ?        S    Nov28   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root      6062  0.0  0.0  28388  3020 ?        S    Nov27   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root      7394  0.0  0.0  28536  3156 ?        S    Nov27   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     10347  0.0  0.0  28388  2940 ?        S    Nov27   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     11349  0.0  0.0  28388  2980 ?        S    Nov28   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     11368  0.0  0.0  28388  2924 ?        S    Nov28   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     13397  0.0  0.0  28388  3028 ?        S    Nov27   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     14562  0.0  0.0  28388  2988 ?        S    Nov26   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     15616  0.0  0.0  28388  3032 ?        S    09:19   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     16399  0.0  0.0  28388  2968 ?        S    Nov27   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     17532  0.0  0.0  28388  2940 ?        S    00:19   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     17807  0.0  0.0  28388  3024 ?        S    Nov28   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     20332  0.0  0.0  28388  3036 ?        S    Nov27   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     20692  0.0  0.0  28388  2952 ?        S    Nov26   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     21986  0.0  0.0  28388  2972 ?        S    12:17   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     22824  0.0  0.0  28388  2940 ?        S    Nov27   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     23886  0.0  0.0  28388  3032 ?        S    Nov28   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     24545  0.0  0.0  28388  2980 ?        S    03:00   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     26550  0.0  0.0  28388  3028 ?        S    Nov27   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     27408  0.0  0.0  28388  2956 ?        S    Nov26   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     27965  0.0  0.0  28388  2944 ?        S    14:17   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     27978  0.0  0.0  28616  3136 ?        S    Nov28   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     30090  0.0  0.0  28388  2908 ?        S    Nov28   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     30738  0.0  0.0  28388  2912 ?        S    05:17   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind
root     31298  0.0  0.0  28388  2940 ?        S    Nov27   0:00
/lib/systemd/systemd-logind

So the problem is not nearly so bad any more.

John

On 11/20/2014 03:11 PM, Sjoerd Simons wrote:
> Hey John,
>
> On Sun, Nov 09, 2014 at 06:13:30PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
>> I will try this.  It is a bit complicated because the system in question
>> is also running ZFS and there are some bugs with that boot, but I think
>> I have worked them out enough.  It may take me a few days to find the
>> time, however.
> Did you find the time to get this system booting with systemd? Would be great
> to further narrow it down.
>
>
>> On 11/03/2014 08:43 PM, Michael Biebl wrote:
>>> Am 18.10.2014 um 21:49 schrieb John Goerzen:
>>>> Package: systemd
>>>> Version: 215-5+b1
>>>> Severity: grave
>>>> Justification: renders package unusable
>>>>
>>>> On investigating why my 8GB system, which was suddenly running extremely
>>>> slow and maxed out on swap, I discovered numerous systemd-logind
>>>> processes hogging RAM.  Specifically, 41 processes using 4278148KB (or
>>>> roughly 4GB) of RAM.
>>>>
>>>> Here is some output from top:
>>>>
>>> As John told me on IRC: He is running systemd-logind under systemd-shim
>>> on this particular system.
>>> On other systems, where systemd is PID 1 he does not experience this
>> issue.
>>> I told him to find out the current running systemd-logind process which
>>> owns the org.freedesktop.login1 D-Bus name via
>>> "dbus-send --system --dest=org.freedesktop.DBus --print-reply
>>> /org/freedesktop/DBus org.freedesktop.DBus.GetConnectionUnixProcessID
>>> string:org.freedesktop.login1"
>>>
>>> and monitor that process via strace while periodically checking with the
>>> above command, when logind drops off the bus. So we can eventually see
>>> from the strace what happens at that time.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, when stracing the process, John is no longer able to
>>> reproduce the issue, as he told on IRC.
>>>
>>> John, to narrow down the problem, could you please boot with
>>> init=/bin/systemd to verify if this issue is indeed related to
>> systemd-shim.
>>