I’m using Fedora 42 KDE Linux, and I started using Syncthing by simply installing Syncthingtray from Flathub and following the on-screen instructions.
Since the upgrade to 2.0+, my RAM usage has ballooned from around 100mb to 700-800mb.
My machine only has 8GB of RAM and it’s really bogging it down.
I spoke to the developer of Syncthingtray and he said it’s likely a problem with Syncthing itself (he says his own instances are only using around 100mb RAM) and recommeded I reach out here.
I’m kind of a noob here, so please let me know what additional info I can provide and how to rectify this.
System info: Fedora 42, KDE Plasma 6.4.4, Syncthing 2.0.2, Syncthing Tray 2.0.0-1
Thanks, unfortunately it’s a bit hard to say. It’s not the Go parts of Syncthing, but it could be SQLite page caches and whatnot. It could also be the other things that are built into the application in this bundle.
(The usage stats say “memoryUsageMiB”: 34 (Go) and “processRSSMiB”: 461 (process total RSS))
Can you post a screenshot of the Syncthing Web GUI? I would like to see what your local state is, how many folders and devices there are, etc.
Syncthing can use quite a bit of RAM, e.g. on the device I’m currently using there are 32 folders, 5 remote devices, the local state is 383 GB (365,111 files and 43,471 directories), and the RAM usage is usually about 450-500 MB. This is with Syncthing amd64 under Windowx 10 x64, and there may be some differences between different OS, architectures, etc.
Are you absolutely sure that the old version used just 100 MB of RAM though? I’m personally not seeing a noticeable increase in RAM usage between Syncthing v1 and v2, although I’d need to test the exact same configurations to be 100% sure. Still, an increase from 100 MB to 700 MB sounds just too drastic to me.
Yeah I’ve been watching it like a hawk since I only have 8GB of RAM and it fills up fast.
I’ll have to grab a screenshot when I get home. I’ve only got five folders. However my local state is 600GB so maybe it’s actually normal…? Only one of my folders sees regular changes and it’s only about 13GB.
Buying a proper modern machine with more RAM would solve a number of things for me, I know…
Similar situation here, although it’s 16GB of RAM for me on my main laptop. I always struggle to prevent it from being filled . I’ve got a habit of having million programs open at the same time though, and I’ve even managed to fill all 96GB of RAM at my home PC at least a few times, so there’s that.
In the meantime, I’ve actually managed to do some testing, and here are my results. All is done with a test folder of 24GB, and also after restarting Syncthing once after the initial scan of the folder.
Syncthing v2.0.3 amd64: 124 MB
Syncthing v2.0.3 x86: 59 MB
Syncthing v1.30.0 amd64: 76 MB
Syncthing v1.30.0 x86: 45 MB
Judging by this, Syncthing v2 does use more RAM than Syncthing v1, although I would like to do the same test with a much larger dataset to see if the difference in RAM usage scales proportionally or not.
Try the non-GUI version of Syncthing from Syncthing | Downloads as a data point? It is totally possible that Syncthing uses more memory as a result of the 2.0 changes, or maybe less. I wouldn’t expect an “explosion’“ though.
A downside to Flatpak and/or other similar sandboxed packages is that Syncthing Tray will load its own private copy of Qt and other supporting libraries, so you’re basically running a mini KDE on top of your KDE desktop. Installing via RPM will reduce RAM usage by allowing Syncthing Tray to share the KDE libraries with your desktop.
Well this is odd but welcome. I don’t know what might’ve changed but Syncthing(tray) is suddenly down under 100mb of RAM usage again. I haven’t rebooted or anything since last posting here.
I wouldn’t expect an “explosion’“ though.
