[MPlayer-users] memory leak on input file change

[Jens Hanowell]

Problem: Whenever mplayer switches to another movie, about 50..100kB 
system memory is lost. Normally I won't care about this looking at
dvd's, but in a continuously running presentation environment this
is a real issue.

Testing conditions to reproduce the problem:
- system runs x11 and mplayer only, no window manager, no other program invoked
- have about 10..100 different *.vob or *.mpg files accessible by a nfs-server
- switch to next file every 5 seconds (yes, this is hard but shows the problem)
- watch the system per telnet from another pc, running top, look at slowly
  rising %mem of mplayer from 2.5% to above 90% until it dies

Different system environments I used to verify during last 3 years:
- tried on about 20 different mainboards 
- tried with debian woody, sarge, etch, ubuntu, kernel 2.4.18 to 2.6.16
- tried with mplayer-0.90, -0.91, Vemp1.5 and MPlayer-1.0rc2
- tried with fbdev, x11, dga, fixed-vo, full-screen, always same behavior

Result: After about 12 hours maximum the 256MB are lost and the system freezes, 
even the telnet channel. System no longer responds to ping - simply dead.

This never happends if a single file is looped continously. I assume, the 
difference is, that the looped file reaches it's natural end of file while 
the others zapped through in my test don't. 
Is there any cleanup that stream handlers implicit do on EOF?

Debugging such a large system is beyond my abilities, so this is all I can say.

Thanks for thinking about it
Jens