Memory leak with TriggerClientEvent

[niCe86]

What happened?

When sending tables through TriggerClientEvent, memory is leaking. It is probably more noticeable with larger tables.

I'm using TriggerClientEvent a lot and my server RAM usage gradually increases from 500 MB to up to 10-15 GB at the end of the day (FXServer is being restarted daily).

Expected result

When sending table through TriggerClientEvent, allocated memory should be cleared.

Reproduction steps

collectgarbage('stop')
print(1, collectgarbage('count'))

local data = {}
for i = 1, 100000 do
data[i] = i
end

print(2, collectgarbage('count'))

for i = 1, 100 do
TriggerClientEvent("Test", playerid, data)
end

print(3, collectgarbage('count'))

data = nil
collectgarbage('collect')

print(4, collectgarbage('count'))

Importancy

Unknown

Area(s)

FXServer

Specific version(s)

Tested on FiveM artifact 12180 and 12651
I have confirmation from @IS4Code that on some ancient artifact from 2022 this doesn't occur

Additional information

The garbage collect clears all the garbage, but RAM usage won't decrease.

Example of my results:
[ script:wtls] 1 354979.76171875
[ script:wtls] 2 359075.85546875
[ script:wtls] 3 395079.3125
[ script:wtls] 4 350609.63769531

Example of actual RAM usage:

• 560 MB RAM at the beginning
• 629 MB RAM after execution of the code above
• 580 MB RAM after few seconds and another manual garbage collect (just to be sure)
• 568 MB RAM after resource restart

You can easily repeat the test script and the RAM will gradually increase. I have suspicion, that this memory leak might somehow degrade CPU performance as well?

[d22tny]

adding some data here.

server start:

800 MB ~ 60 players

server gets full ~ 1250 players -> 22GB

6 hours are passing by -> 40GB

morning ~ 70 players -> 11.7 GB

so there was a leak of about 10GB over 9 hours.

[joaoconti]

I'm facing the same problem. It reaches 19GB; as soon as I open the server, it starts increasing by 2 to 4 MB per second as players join.

20 minutes after the first post, it's already at 4GB.

kicked all the players from the server and started stopping each resource one by one to see what was causing the memory consumption. I stopped all the resources, but it was still using 5GB.

[niCe86]

Are you both using the TriggerClientEvent frequently or transfering large data with it?

[joaoconti]

@niCe86 I use it frequently

[Yum1x]

That's a normal behavior when u stop the gc like u did in provided repro, u should call collectgarbage("restart") to restore.

[niCe86]

GC "stop" has absolutely nothing to do with it. It's in the example script solely for the purpose of having control over GC cycles and to demonstrate changes in garbage count. Without GC "stop" the result is the same - the memory leak does still occur.

[d22tny]

In my case i have no stop on the garbage collector. only count to log it, and collect.

[topordenis]

thats how gb works

[niCe86]

AGAIN. Garbage collector has nothing to do with this.

[dendenknows]

Same Issue

[dendenknows]

300 stable players and 2 hours uptime

[d22tny]

300 stable players and 2 hours uptime

This is more likely a memory leak caused by your resources. It is too big to be related to this issue.

[dendenknows]

300 stable players and 2 hours uptime

This is more likely a memory leak caused by your resources. It is too big to be related to this issue.

So how can I check for memory leaks in my resources? Do you recommend any tools or anything?