[tex-live] LaTeX suddenly stopped working (loop/memory leak?)

[Urs Liska]

Hi,

yesterday my texlive installation (texlive-full on Debian Testing) 
stopped working all of a sudden. Unfortunately my day was so 
frustratingly fragmented that I can't recall what events immediately 
preceded the problem. There were a few things happening yesterday, but 
I'm not sure if they're related:

  * I had a major package update with apt (I'll copy the respective
    changes at the end of this message) but I'm 98% sure that this was
    hours before texlive stopped working.
  * Atom wreaked havoc eating up *all* memory including swap, freezing
    my computer. After I removed it and installed the latest version
    this seemed to have been fixed, though
  * At one point I was surprised that I had to log in after a break,
    when I *think* I only set the computer to standby.

So at one point my .tex documents weren't compiled anymore, with xxTeX 
seemingly hanging. First I thought it had to do with issues in my files, 
but the MWE behaves exactly the same:

   \documentclass{article}
   \begin{document}
   Test
   \end{document}

I tested this by invoking a ..tex while watching with htop.

1)

$ latex loop.tex
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.19 (TeX Live 2018/Debian) (preloaded format=latex)
  restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
(./loop.tex
LaTeX2e <2018-04-01> patch level 4
Babel <3.20> and hyphenation patterns for 84 language(s) loaded.

2)

$ lualatex loop.tex
This is LuaTeX, Version 1.07.0 (TeX Live 2018/Debian)
  restricted system commands enabled.
(./loop.tex

In both cases there is no further output on the console. The 
corresponding "latex" or "lualatex" permanently process consumes 100% of 
one CPU core, and memory continuously rises by ~ 6MB/sec - it looks like 
it would do so until there is no memory left. I canceled this after 1/2 GB.

When I stop the compilation with Ctrl-Z (message: "killed") the process 
stays alive, keeping all the memory it had at the end, but CPU dropping 
to zero. I can't kill the process with SIGTERM, only after a SIGKILL it 
disappears.

###

Is there any way I can proceed investigating what could have gotten 
wrong here?

TIA
Urs

PS: After describing this process I have the impression that Atom wasn't 
at fault at all but that this already was LaTeX giving problems. So 
maybe the memory leak was already there while I still could compile .tex 
documents?

PPS: Here are the related changes in the apt upgrade from yesterday (as 
recorded by etckeeper):

$ sudo git log -n 1 | grep tex
     -fonts-texgyre 20160520-1 all
     +fonts-texgyre 20180621-1 all
     -ktexteditor-data 5.45.0-1 all
     -ktexteditor-katepart 5.45.0-1 amd64
     +ktexteditor-data 5.46.0-1 all
     +ktexteditor-katepart 5.46.0-1 amd64
     -latexmk 1:4.41-1 all
     +latexmk 1:4.56-0.1 all
     -libkf5texteditor-bin 5.45.0-1 amd64
     -libkf5texteditor5 5.45.0-1 amd64
     -libkf5textwidgets-data 5.45.0-2 all
     -libkf5textwidgets5 5.45.0-2 amd64
     +libkf5texteditor-bin 5.46.0-1 amd64
     +libkf5texteditor5 5.46.0-1 amd64
     +libkf5textwidgets-data 5.46.0-1 all
     +libkf5textwidgets5 5.46.0-1 amd64
     -libptexenc1 2018.20180416.47457-3+b1 amd64
     +libptexenc1 2018.20180416.47457-4 amd64
     -libsynctex2 2018.20180416.47457-3+b1 amd64
     +libsynctex2 2018.20180416.47457-4 amd64
     -libtexlua52 2018.20180416.47457-3+b1 amd64
     -libtexlua53 2018.20180416.47457-3+b1 amd64
     -libtexluajit2 2018.20180416.47457-3+b1 amd64
     +libtexlua52 2018.20180416.47457-4 amd64
     +libtexlua53 2018.20180416.47457-4 amd64
     +libtexluajit2 2018.20180416.47457-4 amd64
     -tex-gyre 20160520-1 all
     +tex-gyre 20180621-1 all
     -texinfo 6.5.0.dfsg.1-2+b1 amd64
     +texinfo 6.5.0.dfsg.1-3 amd64
     -texlive-binaries 2018.20180416.47457-3+b1 amd64
     +texlive-binaries 2018.20180416.47457-4 amd64
     -texstudio 2.12.8+debian-1 amd64
     -texstudio-doc 2.12.8+debian-1 all
     -texstudio-l10n 2.12.8+debian-1 all
     +texstudio 2.12.8+debian-2 amd64
     +texstudio-doc 2.12.8+debian-2 all
     +texstudio-l10n 2.12.8+debian-2 all

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