GNOME 3 upper RAM limit?

[Brian McGovern (bmcgover)]

This may sound like a stupid question, but I wanted to float it before I spent some time to go off and try to research it. I'm seeing a problem with Gnome 3 not working above a certain memory configuration, but there is still some overlap I can't explain. I figured I'd float it in case it was a known issue.

Gnome 3.14.2 works on a FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE-p10 machine with 32GB of memory (32768 real, 31641 avail).

Gnome 3.16.2 works on a Lenovo laptop with 8GB of RAM.

Gnome 3.16.2 fails on a Lenovo laptop with 32GB of RAM (same laptop, 32768 real, 31386 avail)

Gnome 3.18.0 fails on a server with 256GB of RAM.

X in all cases is generally well behaved; I can run xdm, log in, life is wonderful. A few applications crash, but no more or less so than under Gnome on the working machines.

The common symptom of failure is that upon providing your username and password, there is a long delay, followed by the white "Oh no! Something has gone wrong." screen with the option of logging back out, which works.

The only message I get on the console beyond the normal startup junk is is "gdm[XXXX]: Failed to remove greeter program access to display. Trying to proceed."

On the Lenovo, I can switch between the memory configs, and it "works", or "not".

Again, just curious if its known in circles other than mine before I chase it at all. I have the fallback of going to another window manager/desktop, so its not critical, so I'm not sure how many hours I'll burn on it, but I'd like to be able to keep trucking with my existing desktop.