This memory leak is fixed in the daily build beta – they're at version 20.0.1128.0 build 135549, while Ubuntu only has version 20.0.1132.47 Ubuntu 12.04 build 144678. Being more than 30 versions behind.
Every page reload takes some memory until all memory is exausted. Closing tabs doesn't free any memory until all instances of the process are closed. Under certain circumstances, closing chromium-browser leads to an out of memory condition, reporting the browser crashed (it indeed did, but while at the process closing down all instances. This is invisible to the user.). Maybe these bugs are fixed for the later versions (I am sure they are). BTW: the beta-ppa for this browser states to hold daily builds. I can't confirm this. The last build installed by this channel is now about six months old – far form daily! – if it would be build daily the ppa where expected to hold version 20.0.1128.0 build 135549 as of Nov. 6th, 2012 1:13 CET. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to chromium-browser in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/608538 Title: chromium has a memory leak! Status in “chromium-browser” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: Binary package hint: chromium-browser Chromium is getting too hungry for RAM. It is not crucial and the system overall does not hang as has been reported before, however it is a very annoying problem. With a few open tabs (like mostly wikipedia.org) it manages to consume up to 500MB. I have some extensions turned on, they do not seem to be the culprit. It is actual tabs. Here's what I get from top: top - 00:07:42 up 5 days, 2:52, 6 users, load average: 0.04, 0.13, 0.14 Tasks: 219 total, 1 running, 217 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie Cpu(s): 5.9%us, 4.2%sy, 0.8%ni, 86.5%id, 2.6%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 1529884k total, 1493028k used, 36856k free, 17752k buffers Swap: 1638624k total, 676916k used, 961708k free, 391840k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 21450 me 20 0 1056m 170m 6988 S 0 11.4 6:05.47 chromium-browse 13560 me 20 0 917m 128m 15m S 0 8.6 0:15.55 chromium-browse 11824 me 20 0 1439m 92m 7984 S 0 6.2 18:26.01 amarok 2156 me 20 0 711m 79m 15m S 9 5.3 28:10.86 chromium-browse 13266 me 25 5 898m 75m 14m S 1 5.1 0:17.35 chromium-browse 19944 me 25 5 920m 69m 5668 S 0 4.7 1:23.94 chromium-browse 2188 me 20 0 870m 37m 2428 S 0 2.5 6:22.08 chromium-browse 13258 me 20 0 233m 27m 14m S 0 1.8 0:01.52 emacs23 1646 me 20 0 395m 23m 7200 S 0 1.6 1:53.94 gnome-panel 9906 me 20 0 167m 22m 2380 S 1 1.5 8:46.08 amuled 883 root 20 0 195m 20m 8356 S 5 1.4 44:03.29 Xorg 12424 me 20 0 291m 18m 4912 S 0 1.2 0:50.65 python 7617 me 20 0 570m 16m 4968 S 0 1.1 0:22.35 nautilus 1878 me 20 0 262m 11m 5096 S 1 0.8 3:59.72 gnome-terminal 9891 root 25 5 36624 10m 324 S 0 0.7 1:26.84 moblock 26841 me 20 0 99368 9312 1496 S 0 0.6 0:04.02 mutt 2198 me 20 0 842m 9216 4644 S 0 0.6 0:44.33 chromium-browse 2183 me 20 0 843m 8800 2892 S 0 0.6 1:01.03 chromium-browse 1716 me 20 0 414m 8560 4832 S 0 0.6 1:26.13 wnck-applet 1746 me 20 0 427m 8072 4448 S 0 0.5 0:14.89 clock-applet 1740 me 20 0 270m 7952 4472 S 0 0.5 0:15.04 gweather-applet 2193 me 20 0 842m 7888 3116 S 0 0.5 0:44.86 chromium-browse 1631 me 20 0 313m 7668 3428 S 1 0.5 19:40.85 compiz And here's what the "stats for nerds" says itself: Memory Browser Private Proportional Chromium 543,424k 74,517k Note: If other browsers (e.g. IE, Firefox, Safari) are running, I'll show their memory details here. I guess this is too much! ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04 Package: chromium-browser 5.0.375.99~r51029-0ubuntu0.10.04.1 Uname: Linux 2.6.34-020634-generic x86_64 Architecture: amd64 Date: Wed Jul 21 23:59:41 2010 ProcEnviron: LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash SourcePackage: chromium-browser To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bug/608538/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
