RAM not freed on the Raspberry Pi edition

Hello! :) I just tried TeamViewer on the Raspberry Pi 3 and it gobbles up a lot of RAM. This didn't happen about 6 months ago, so I hope it will be fixed rather soon.

Technical info:
- Raspberry Pi 3 model B, resolution 1920x1080, 76MB GPU memory
- fresh image of Raspbian (2019-09-26-raspbian-buster.zip), fully updated
- TeamViewer 14.6.2452 H
- no other software started manually or automatically during the test

Here are the steps I made and how the RAM usage looked like. By RAM usage I mean the total amount (all processes) reported by the LXDE Task Manager. Also please note that after each step I waited for at least 15-20 seconds for the RAM usage to settle:
1. [138MB] Fresh boot with the TeamViewer service started (icon in the systray)
2. [533MB] Remote connection established
3. [542MB] TeamViewer Host window unminimized
4. [677MB] Clicked the feedback/about dropdown menu in the TeamViewer Host window
5. [801MB] Clicked About and the About window is displayed
6. [798MB] Closed the About window
7. [796MB] Closed the TeamViewer Host window (systray icon still active)
8. [803MB] Clicked systray icon and opened the TeamViewer Host window again
9. [804MB] Clicked the feedback/about dropdown menu in the TeamViewer Host window
10. [824MB] Clicked About and the About window is displayed
11. [824MB] Closed the About window
12. [822MB] Closed the TeamViewer Host window (systray icon still active)
13. [747MB] Closed the TeamViewer session (systray icon still active)

As you can see, there's some, but not much of an effect by repeating steps #4-7, and subsequent repeats won't generate any significant fluctuations in RAM usage. I didn't check the swap usage because I didn't want to start more processes and "pollute" this test. Then I started a new session:

1. [850MB] Started a new TeamViewer session after I closed the previous one
2. [836MB] TeamViewer Host window unminimized
3. [837MB] Clicked the feedback/about dropdown menu in the TeamViewer Host window
4. [848MB] Clicked About and the About window is displayed
5. [844MB] Closed both the About and Host windows
6. [749MB] Closed the TeamViewer session (systray icon still active)

The good thing is this time the Pi's OS didn't freeze in this last test, like it did 2 times before, but obviously TeamViewer should (1) free the RAM that it no longer needs and (2) try to use less RAM, because there's not much else you can do if your RAM usage is at 850/926MB.

Oh, wait... I thought I might as well try another session and the OS froze again.

raspbian-buster-teamviewer-5.jpg

Comments

  • I can confirm this behavior with 14.7.1965 as well.

    Have been working for a couple days on a new setup of an old RPi3 (trying to replace a Windows Plex media server, headless of course), have used TeamViewer for years on Windows and wanted to continue that here.  (Ultimately plan to move to a Pi4, but need to prove I can duplicate my current setup first.)

    If there's no solution for this issue soon, I'll be forced to move away from Teamviewer entirely, in favor of anything at all that works. :-/

  • I confirm same problem on a pi 3b with 14.7.1965

  • Same on fresh installer Raspbian Buster and Teamviewer 15.1.3937 H. I tried the Raspbian Buster with desktop as well as the Raspbian Buster Lite with manually installed GUI, but not the Raspbian Buster with desktop and recommended software. I am connecting from Windows 10 machines

     

    pi@raspberrypi-hutschiene:~ $ uname -a
    Linux raspberrypi-hutschiene 4.19.75-v7+ #1270 SMP Tue Sep 24 18:45:11 BST 2019 armv7l GNU/Linux

    Raspbi_Teamviewer.jpg

     

  • Thanks for testing this. I was wondering if the newer TeamViewer version fixed this issue, but I waited until the next year to test it. I will probably use VNC instead, as this is taking too long to get any kind of reply from the developers.

    Happy New Year, everyone! o/

  • mikk
    mikk Posts: 1

    prove me wrong, but i believe that this is still an issue one year later.

    between consecutive teamviewer session on raspi 3, the memory is not freed and so the raspi freezes at one point.

    that means that remote control actually kills the application rather than helps it.