v17 Kodi + TVHeadend out of memory (20+ GB usage)
#1
My HTPC specs:
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
AMD FX-8320E (8 core)
32 GB RAM
2x 250 GB HDD RAID-1

Kodi 17.4 from repository
TVHeadEnd 4.0.9-16~g63c1034~xenial
TVHeadEnd addon pvr.hts.so.3.4.27
OTA antenna into Hauppauge HVR-1250 (I don't remember the exact model, been years since initial setup)
LiveTV timeshift ENABLED/DISABLED

advancedsettings.xml snippet:
<cache>
<buffermode>1</buffermode>
<readfactor>1.5</readfactor>
<memorysize>52428800</memorysize>
</cache>


This setup has been gracefully upgraded since Kodi 16.x, maybe 15.x. I don't remember exactly.

The problem:
Watching LiveTV (not recordings) through Kodi causes the kodi.bin process to consume memory until the linux kernel triggers out of memory. I usually catch it and dump the process when I notice the HDDs getting thrashed from swap usage. The highest memory usage I have seen so far was over 20 GB. TVHeadEnd timeshift has no effect on the resultant kodi.bin memory usage when configured from TVHeadEnd's web interface.

I have tried clamping the kodi.bin process memory usage with:
ulimit -v 524288 (512 MB, instant startup crash)
ulimit -v 1048576 (1 GB, crash later during load)
ulimit -v 2097152 (2 GB, crashes at main menu screen)
ulimit -v 4194304 (4 GB, loads kodi crashes approx 15 mins of LiveTV)
ulimit -v 8388608 (8 GB, still testing this RAM limit)

I know forcing ulimit is an ugly way to handle this, but it's my only option to keep the system from going down until I resolve it.

8 GB of RAM seems ludicrous for a 1080p OTA stream video player with timeshift disabled.

I feel like I am missing something so simple it's stupid or there is something seriously wrong.

Suggestions welcome!
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#2
Maybe not swap files, but other files can grow in size quite a lot.
Try this fix: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2582724
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Kodi + TVHeadend out of memory (20+ GB usage)0