[GNC] GnuCash v2.6.19-1 has started freezing on Ubuntu 18.04 after a recent system update

[Parke]

Hello,

I have used GnuCash since 2003, and have used GnuCash on Ubuntu for at
least the last 10 years.

I have used GnuCash v2.6.19 (the version provided by Ubuntu) on Ubuntu
18.04 for at least the last year.  I have encountered no stability
problems until this week.

Aside:  I guess I should also add that I run GnuCash in the Openbox
window manager, and I launch X via startx and a custom .xinitrc file.
So it is possible, perhaps likely, that "standard" parts of Ubuntu's
desktop infrastructure are not running on my workstation.

I shut down my Ubuntu workstation prior to California's recent massive
power outage.  After the power outage, I upgraded the kernel and all
the Ubuntu provided packages.  (I am uncertain as to whether or not
GnuCash was updated as part of this upgrade.  I have no reason to
believe it was.)

After this software update, GnuCash has started freezing.  Freezes
seem to happen when I am scrolling up or down through the items in
some account.  Beyond that, I have not noticed a pattern to when the
freezes occur.  By "freeze", I mean the X window containing GnuCash
stops drawing/updating itself.  GnuCash consumes 0% CPU.  No error
messages are printed to stdout or stderr.  GnuCash does not respond to
SIGINT, but SIGTERM ends the GnuCash process.

After the first freeze, I noticed that most of the RAM in my system
was being used.  The system has 16GB of RAM and no swap.  I quit all
running programs (including Xorg) , but still 8GB of RAM was being
used!  This seems strange to me, but I have not measured RAM usage in
this manner previously, so... maybe it is... normal?

I experienced three freezes of GnuCash.  The second and third happened
fairly quickly after the first freeze.  Suspecting a (kernel?) memory
leak, I rebooted into the previous kernel (4.15.0-46 vs 4.15.0-65).

However, I just experienced my first GnuCash freeze running on the
previous (4.15.0-46) kernel.  So it does not seem to be a kernel
issue.  After this freeze, I quit most programs (especially the
Chromium browser).  Memory usage is as follows:

$ free -h
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            15G        4.2G        9.5G         35M        1.9G         11G
Swap:            0B          0B          0B

"Used" is 4.2G, "buff/cache" is 1.9G.  That leaves 2.4G of memory
being used somewhere.  But top does not show any programs using any
significant amounts of memory.

GnuCash is the only program that has been affected, at least thus far.
But when GnuCash first froze, my system had only been up for 5 days.
As of now (after the reboot into the old kernel), the current uptime
is about 26 hours.  Previously, this workstation would go up to
several hundred days without a reboot.  I typically use GnuCash at
least once or twice a month.

I suppose it is also possible that my GnuCash accounts file has
"gotten too large" or that some other (unknown) limit inside of
GnuCash has been passed, and this is causing the freezes..  My GnuCash
save file appears to be 1.6MB.  So it seems unlikely I have passed
some hidden limit.

The FAQ ...
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Troubleshooting_and_Improvements
... suggests looking at /tmp/gnucash.trace.

/tmp/gnucash.trace is currently empty (zero bytes).  However, I did
not know to check this file while Gnucash was frozen.  Does the trace
file get truncated to zero each time GnuCash starts?  (I have
restarted GnuCash since the last freeze.)

I am happy to hear any suggestions for how to proceed.  I recognize
that I am running a very old version of GnuCash (the version provided
by Ubuntu 18.04).

I am considering waiting for Ubuntu 19.10 and installing it, as I
suspect that some non-GnuCash upgrade to 18.04 is causing the problem.
And given the intermittent nature of the problem (and given that the
problem produces no output), I suspect it will be very difficult to
track down.

I am mostly reporting this issue in case anyone else is experiencing it.

Best,

Parke