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Memory Leak DBD Linux - Help me please <3

boonanapancake
boonanapancake Member Posts: 6
edited August 2023 in Ask the Community


I play dead by Daylight through steam on Linux. Everything works smoothly up until recently. It could have been the steam update, but no other games I have tested have had the same issue, and DBD's update was around the same time.


The issue: Once the game connects to the servers a memory leak starts, and eventually all 32Gb of RAM get filled, never clearing to swap memory, eventually freezing my system. The process that is doing it is steamwebhelper, yet no other steam game generates this problem. I've looked near and far for anyone with a similar issue, but haven't found any body with the exact same problem.


The problem is reproduced every-time I try to play.


Additional relevant info is that if backround vulkan shaders is on in steam, the memory leak will happen anytime steam is open. So not sure if it is a DBD bug, but currently the only game doing this to my system.


Thanks.

Post edited by EQWashu on

Best Answer

  • knight_killer
    knight_killer Member Posts: 54
    Answer ✓

    Bit of a bump but when the mesa update came out it broke shader pre-caching for me on Steam. I've always run DBD with the -dx12 launch command. Running DBD without -dx12 as a launch command for me results in a memory leak at the campfire. Starting DBD with -dx12 as a launch command and turning shader pre-caching off in the downloads tab in Steam settings allows me to play the game.

Answers

  • edgarpoop
    edgarpoop Member Posts: 8,453

    Which kernel are you on? Are you running the flatpak version of Steam? Lots more info needed in this case

  • boonanapancake
    boonanapancake Member Posts: 6

    Hi there,

    I apologize for not adding this information in as I am fairly new to linux.

    I am using Kubuntu

    Kernal: 6.2.0-26-generic

    I believe I am using SNAP version of Steam.


    Thanks in advance

  • edgarpoop
    edgarpoop Member Posts: 8,453
    edited August 2023

    Snaps are extremely finicky in my experience. I would be curious if this still happens if you uninstalled the Snap version and tried the Debian package or the Flatpak version. Your other option would be to pkill -9 the process that is eating up the memory and troubleshooting from there.

  • SexArcana
    SexArcana Member Posts: 8
    edited August 2023

    I'm having the same issue on Arch, the game hangs after around 8GB eats up over 12GB of Memory before earlyoom eventually kills it.

    I've tried multiple different versions of Proton, running the game with and without a predownloaded shader cache, nothing does anything. I get to campfire and after around 20-30 seconds it eats up the maximum available memory on my PC if I disable earlyoom.

    To note: I'm running an AMD Ryzen+Radeon system using Arch Linux kernel 6.4.11-arch2-1 on KDE Plasma X11, running the game under my package maintainer's version of Steam (steam-runtime). It's not a driver issue, I've tried both lib32-vulkan-radeon (mesa) and lib32-amdvlk (amd open) and the memory leak happens with both. I haven't tried lib32-vulkan-amdgpu-pro (amd proprietary) because it's just actively worse than the other two.

    I'd also like to note that this only started happening today, out of the blue. I didn't even update any packages, it just sponrtaneously started leaking memory.

  • 09SHARKBOSS
    09SHARKBOSS Member Posts: 1,368

    i hope your porblem gets fixed soon

  • boonanapancake
    boonanapancake Member Posts: 6

    @SexArcana fixed it temporarily, it popped again yesterday. did you find any fixes?

  • SexArcana
    SexArcana Member Posts: 8
    edited August 2023

    I'm having a separate issue where the game itself actually fills memory on a few of my systems, not the steamwebhelper process. From what I know the steamwebhelper thing is a known issue in steam caused by a large number of factors including the overlay and client library that used to be fixable with the --no-browser flag which valve decided to remove. I've heard it can be alleviated by disabling the overlay or in worst case reinstalling steam or switching to a different vulkan driver such as RADV instead of AMDVLK.

    My issue is a bit different, in that the game process itself is taking up resources, under a similar situation; it only starts leaking once I get to the campfire screen. I haven't found any solution to it yet since it appears to be a bug, and I've already made a ticket for it.

  • boonanapancake
    boonanapancake Member Posts: 6
    edited August 2023

    @SexArcana Our problems are the same, after further investigation after I made the post it is the game itself. We fixed it temporarily by switching what type of steam package I had. I went from Debian to snaps. It only solved it for a day or so and then the memory leak with DBD itself started happening again. DBD consumes all 32 GB of ram as soon as I hit menus/campfire. If I don’t close it right away my entire computer freezes up. I made a post in bug reporting and was instantly shut down and told it was a tech issue. It’s nice to see someone with a bit more knowledge explain the issue. So I appreciate your time in reporting it. Hopefully it gets fixed soon, this is really the only game I enjoy playing. I’ve tried it with a few other steam games, both including single player and online and dead by daylight is the only one that does it. I agree it is a bug and that’s why I reported it originally. I am following your post as well and hope they fix it because it seems to be on their end. I feel like I’ve tried everything except switching back to windows which i don’t want to do.

  • NP932
    NP932 Member Posts: 1
    edited August 2023

    Hey, I'm on Fedora and have the same problem using the RPM package of Steam.

    Switching to the Steam Flatpak works for me so I recommend trying that in the meantime.


    Edit: Also after some digging it looks like a bug in Mesa 23.1.6 (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/9599)

  • boonanapancake
    boonanapancake Member Posts: 6

    Thank you so much! I got my update, and this was what fixed it for me finally. I appreciate you