code-server: [Bug]: Memory leak?

Is there an existing issue for this?

I have searched the existing issues

OS/Web Information

Web Browser: Chrome
Local OS: macOS, ChromeOS
Remote OS: Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04
Remote Architecture: x86-64
code-server --version: 4.2.0, 4.3.0

Hi,

The memory consumed by the code-server (node) process gradually increases over time, regardless of whether and how the IDE is used. I have tested it multiple times and it has eventually used up all the 8GiB RAM of the server machine in a matter of 2 or so weeks.

Is this a well-known problem? Can I solve it permanently instead of rebooting the sever each time?

Many thanks

Steps to Reproduce

Install code-server and run its daemon
Continually measure memory usage of the process
Wait 😃

Expected

The memory usage should not be monotonically increasing

Actual

It is

Logs

No response

Screenshot/Video

No response

Does this issue happen in VS Code?

I cannot reproduce this in VS Code.

Are you accessing code-server over HTTPS?

I am using HTTPS.

Notes

No response

About this issue

Original URL
State: open
Created 2 years ago
Comments: 19 (5 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

I also thought to temporarily increase the Cloud Memory from 4GB to 8GB.

My “solution” was adding a line to crontab to restart code-server every 24 hours 😆

aghasemi on May 23, 2022

Have you tried messing with the extensions? That also produced a solution for me 😃)

I’d rather wait for an official fix. But which extension? 😄

Volar Extension used about 700MB per instance in my case. It also felt like it did still run in the background after closing an workspace.

LaCocoRoco on Jun 6, 2022

Oh, sorry. I just found that the memory usage inside docker container and outside is not same, and the difference can be large. In container, use free -h get used + cached can be 7GB, but outside container, use docker stats containerID, show 1GB / 7GB.

Tzxhy on Jul 20, 2023

@jsjoeio Thanks, i will look into it!

LaCocoRoco on May 25, 2022

Is there a way to limit the ram usage of installed extensions?

Not that I’m aware of. Found some things I’d read to look into it though:

jsjoeio on May 25, 2022

Side note: this would be a fun problem to solve. I’m not sure how, but I’m sure there are tools we could use to figure it out.

https://www.npmjs.com/package/heapdump?

benz0li on May 24, 2022

Does this also happen with native VS Code?

No. I have VSCode continually open on a MacBook for weeks and never had a memory issue. Same for a ChromeOS device.

aghasemi on May 14, 2022