After much messing around I have discovered that this is actually a Xorg bug (Bug #1314787 ).
However, the issue is greatly exacerbated by the Network-manager-gnome 0.9.8.8-0ubuntu4.3 update. Prior to the update, the issue was not salient. After the update Xorg runs the system out of memory several times per day. Noticiable immediatly after starting 'net usage. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to network-manager in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1351903 Title: network-manager-gnome 0.9.8.8-0ubuntu4.3 & or associated libraries cause HUGE memory usage on wlan0 Status in “network-manager” package in Ubuntu: New Bug description: Network-manager-gnome 0.9.8.8-0ubuntu4.3 & associated libraries cause HUGE memory usage on wlan0. Usage of wlan0 by any net app causes resident memory consumption by NMG to grow until all system memory is used and system becomes unresponsive. This takes several hours, but is consistent and unavoidable. Reverting to previous version of NMG (0.9.8.8-0ubuntu4.2) eliminates the issue and NMG functions as expected. Xubuntu 14.04 LTS up-to-date AMD64 Toshiba C650D Laptop w/ Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/1351903/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
