This is a serious issue because it can happen at unpredictable times, and the memory leak runs with enormous speed. The system locks up so much that I had to hard reboot several times which is not good and can do damage to files.
As far as I found out, the issue happens when nautilus tries to generate a thumbnail of a specific file (or a symlink of such a file) that is laying in the Desktop folder. When the file is in another location, nautilus still fails to create a thumbnail but doesn't leak memory. Thumbnail generation should be able to fail (with appropriate error/exception handling) and ignore failed files without impacting the system. ** Attachment added: "Zip archive containing a file that causes issues with thumbnailing when it is located in the Desktop folder." https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1211937/+attachment/3778593/+files/file.zip -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to nautilus in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1211937 Title: Nautilus leaks memory right after system start Status in “nautilus” package in Ubuntu: New Bug description: Directly after logging in, nautilus starts to take more memory with a speed of ~4 MB/s. After 10-20 minutes the system freezes so extremely that it doesn't respond to any input (alt+f1, reisub). This could be caused by something related to the desktop since nautilus is used to render the desktop. ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04 Package: nautilus 1:3.6.3-0ubuntu16 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-27.40-generic 3.8.13.4 Uname: Linux 3.8.0-27-generic i686 ApportVersion: 2.9.2-0ubuntu8.3 Architecture: i386 Date: Tue Aug 13 20:52:16 2013 GsettingsChanges: b'org.gnome.nautilus.window-state' b'geometry' b"'640x750+0+24'" b'org.gnome.nautilus.window-state' b'sidebar-width' b'152' InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-08-12 (1 days ago) InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Release i386 (20130424) MarkForUpload: True ProcEnviron: TERM=xterm PATH=(custom, no user) XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set> LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash SourcePackage: nautilus UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1211937/+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
