Support Request: Restarting a user session does not release used RAM

Reproduction

Just logout a user using the follwoing webpage: www.antwerpen.be

Check the memory used via the Task Manager, the memory use of SiteKiosk.exe increases after every logout of a user.

Description

You can use
 
for code samples

We have an issue with increasing memory use after each restart of the usersession within SiteKiosk IE.

Our public PC's run Windows 10. We use the IE browser (metro skin) as the default browser. After a user of our website has completed what hey want to do, we force a cache clear, remove alle cookies and security certificates as well as any downloaded files, through the use of the "Logout" function.

After every logout it seems the SiteKiosk applications keeps some memory.

Observving the memory use of Sitekosk.exe in the Task manager we get the following:

restart PC
memory used by SiteKiosk.exe after a user Logout:
194K
284K
369k
440k
515k
602k
669k
691k
742k
821k
862k
903k
944k
1017k
1092k
1170k
1241k => "onvoldoende geheugen op lijn 1 ERROR" We get an "insufficent memory on line 1" error.

After this error occurs, SiteKiosk goes into a kind of "locked" state and the PC needs to be rebooted to get out of this situation.

Are there any measures we can take to make sure that a logout of a user, will not "eat" RAM each time ?

We can not use the Chromium engine (as juggested in an older forum message), as we are using the SiteKiosk Object Model to trigger the User Logout and also the printing of a downloaded document (the SiteKiosk Object Model is used by our angular code in our front-end).

Answer: (3)

Re: Restarting a user session does not release used RAM 4/16/2018 3:05 PM
Hello,

There is no known memory leak in SiteKiosk and I also wasn’t able to get this error when using the start page www.antwerpen.be in Metro IE Skin (I used the logout button approx.. 30 times, the memory usage went up a bit but I still was able to use SiteKiosk and there is no such error message).

But generally it is a known issue that the IE based browser uses a bit more RAM the longer it runs,
This doesn’t apply directly to SiteKiosk but to the IE Webbrowser Control from Microsoft that is used with the IE based skins.

Therefore SiteKiosk has implemented several features to prevent this.
1. By default the SiteKiosk Browser restarts every 6 hours when the screen saver activates.
Please make sure that the screen saver is not deactivated.
If necessary you also can lower the restart value in the skcfg.
See “1. Automatic Process Restart “:
http://www.provisio.com/helpconsole/SiteKiosk%20Help/en-US/default.htm?manuell_editierbare_optionen.htm

2. By default there is an entry at “-->Maintenance” in the SiteKiosk configuration that restarts the complete system every night at 4 A.M.
http://www.provisio.com/helpconsole/SiteKiosk%20Help/en-US/default.htm?maintenance.htm
You may check that this entry is not deleted and add it again if necessary.

3. SiteKiosk also includes a software watchdog (watchdog.exe). Watchdog.exe is a program that is called at the start of SiteKiosk and runs in the background.
See “3. Monitoring“ http://www.provisio.com/helpconsole/SiteKiosk%20Help/en-US/default.htm?maintenance.htm
And “2. Software Watchdog“:
http://www.provisio.com/helpconsole/SiteKiosk%20Help/en-US/default.htm?manuell_editierbare_optionen.htm

If necessary you can check and adjust the threshold value for the “Maximum accepted memory usage” at “-->Maintenance-->Monitoring-->Settings”.
“3.2 Memory threshold values“ http://www.provisio.com/helpconsole/SiteKiosk%20Help/en-US/default.htm?maintenance.htm


Alternatively you can e.g. use the following example script (without further support) to make SiteKiosk restarting on logout and when the screen saver deactivates.

SiteKiosk.OnReset = OnReset;
SiteKiosk.ScreenSaver.OnScreenSaverEnd = OnScreenSaverEnd;

function OnReset(){
if (!SiteKiosk.ScreenSaver.Enabled)
SiteKiosk.Restart();
}

function OnScreenSaverEnd(){
   SiteKiosk.Restart();
}


Just copy & paste the lines above into an editor (e.g. Notepad) and save it as JS file (e.g. RestartOnLogout.js) to the folder “…\SiteKiosk\Html”.
Then add that script to the SiteKiosk configuration (-->Start Page & Browser-->Advanced-->Execute script-->On startup of SiteKiosk, execute the following script file).


Regards,
Michael Olbrich
Re: Restarting a user session does not release used RAM 4/20/2018 4:54 PM
Hi Michael,

thanks for the script. It does contain an error:

function OnReset(){
if (!SiteKiosk.ScreenSaver.Enabled)
SiteKiosk.Restart();
}

Above code will never trigger a ReStart because there is always a screensaver defined.

By changing it as follows below, we now have a true ReStart on Logout:

function OnReset(){
SiteKiosk.Restart();
}


Also we continued testing with the downloaded WebBrowserTestApplication, and we are able to confirm that also this one has increasing memory use when a logout action happens.

So repeated ReStart is OK, but repeated Logout => memory used increases to the point of blocking SK. We confirmed thsi both on 9.5 and 9.6
Re: Restarting a user session does not release used RAM 4/23/2018 9:10 AM
Hello,

You’re right in regards to the script.
Here is the corrected version.

The intention of the first function is to prevent that there is a restart on screen saver beginning (because there is also a logout in the background when the screen saver starts) but on screen saver end.


SiteKiosk.OnReset = OnReset;
SiteKiosk.ScreenSaver.OnScreenSaverEnd = OnScreenSaverEnd;

function OnReset(){
if (!SiteKiosk.ScreenSaver.Active)
SiteKiosk.Restart();
}

function OnScreenSaverEnd(){
   SiteKiosk.Restart();
}


But as stated above I cannot reproduce the problem with repeatedly pressing logout.
I have tested with a new clean SiteKiosk configuration in SiteKiosk 9.6.4409 where I just configured the start page URL (www.antwerpen.be) and the Metro IE Skin.

If we should check this further you may send your SiteKiosk configuration to
support-europe(at)provisio.com

Or check the other way round by creating a new SiteKiosk configuration.

Regards,
Michael Olbrich
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