Possible memory management issues.

[Spidy123222]

I notice when I try running programs that don't particularly need much memory like fex running steam and SB cosmic shake running (4gb ram required for game which also works fine on a 2gb gpu). It quickly runs out of memory on 16gb unified memory m2 pro MacBook Pro under asahi Linux using gnome.

I've tried utilizing swap and it doesn't seem to get utilized enough (never used 1/8th of the 16gb swap). I'm wondering if muvm is having issues in this manner sharing its memory to the host.

Is this the right area to post such report? I just use GitHub and discord for bug reports.

[slp]

muvm configures the VM to use a maximum of ~80% of the RAM available in the system. If the game is not expected to use that much memory, it's likely that what's consuming memory it's the filesystem cache in the guest. #89 should drastically improve this behavior.

[Spidy123222]

muvm configures the VM to use a maximum of ~80% of the RAM available in the system. If the game is not expected to use that much memory, it's likely that what's consuming memory it's the filesystem cache in the guest. #89 should drastically improve this behavior.

I was thinking of testing this. How could I test the branch on the system? I know I need to compile via rust. By doing a cargo build release.

[Spidy123222]

The mentioned pull request was merged but doesn't seem to help for this situation. This is an image of memory usage over time. It doesn't use swap until very end and is a game that doesn't use too much ram. But it does here.

Couldn't screen record as it would crash OBS once it hits the problem.

This would also happen launching EA launcher from trying to run a EA game like burnout paradise remastered.

[Pixel-Lazel]

Hi friends, I did my own post on this topic, because I didn't see this post before. Sorry for that!
I still would like to post my experiences on this.

When I start the system, the RAM usage is pretty low. Less than 5gb. Everything seems fine. But the system keeps filling up the ram to the point that it would just freeze (hard reset required). Furthermore, certain Appliciations seem to consume a lot of ram. When I launch Steam, it consumes up to 6gb of ram on its own. Which means: As soon as I try to load up a game or other ram intensive application, the system wants to fill up more than the available 15,2 gb of ram, which causes a.) Steam to crash or b.) the hole system to freeze. That's how it goes, even if there is almost nothing in the background. Also, there is a significant amount of swap used all the time. With Firefox, Steam and Telegram open and doing nothing I have like 6gb/8gb of swap used, while the ram is almost 100% filled up. That's interesting, because OP seems to have 16gb of swap.

I am pretty surprised by this, because it makes me wonder, how people get along, if they only have an 8gb configuration.

[teohhanhui]

it makes me wonder, how people get along, if they only have an 8gb configuration

By having a larger swap file, e.g.:

sudo /usr/libexec/fedora-asahi-remix-scripts/setup-swap.sh --recreate 16G

(from https://social.treehouse.systems/@AsahiLinux/113532720695827142)

And set zswap to use zstd compression:

echo 'zstd' | sudo tee -a /sys/module/zswap/parameters/compressor
sudo tee /etc/tmpfiles.d/zswap.conf <<'EOF'
#Type Path                                            Mode UID  GID  Age  Content
w     /sys/module/zswap/parameters/compressor         -    -    -    -    zstd
EOF

See also: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Zram#Optimizing_swap_on_zram

[Pixel-Lazel]

Thank you!

sudo /usr/libexec/fedora-asahi-remix-scripts/setup-swap.sh --recreate 16G

For everyone, who tries to reproduce this

1. You can only do this, if you have no swap used at the moment
2. You need to have enough free disc space

I my case it deleted the file, but could not create the new one. Now I have 0 Swao ;D. Can someone here give a potential fix for that?

[Spidy123222]

That's a nice temp solution and I'd need to try it out or expand the swap. Though I do find it odd that when comparing to a system that doesn't use muvm but uses fex that ram usage is at expected utility which was 5gb in total. Not 14gb+ with asahi + muvm with the same setup on that. Since I don't have an other arm system asked someone else to test out with their non muvm asking device.

Most recent test I did was a 2 weeks ago which still persisted. Is there any ideas why it could need much more ram than expected. Wouldn't the host memory be shared for the most part?

[teohhanhui]

I don't know if https://vt.social/@lina/112507831878162342 is still the case.

@slp Has the GPU memory leak in libkrun been fixed?

[Pixel-Lazel]

Does someone have an idea, how to recreate that swap-file? Can't figure out a way to do that and it might be relevant for people trying to reproduce what is said in this threat.

edit:
I solved it myselve:
sudo mkdir -p /var/swap sudo fallocate -l 16G /var/swap/swapfile sudo chmod 600 /var/swap/swapfile sudo mkswap /var/swap/swapfile sudo swapon /var/swap/swapfile
Check, if it worked with:
swapon --show

[jannau]

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/38149 fixes a memleak in the asahi virtio code path. I can't say if this is noticeable in a timespan of hours to days. No fixed mesa released yet.