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From: Robert N Watson <rnw+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: XF86_SVGA eats 9Mb ?
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 13:03:27 -0400
Organization: Freshman, H&SS Undeclared, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 57
Message-ID: <kkXarT200YUs43P1o4@andrew.cmu.edu>
References: <DGJqKz.2KI@cr-df.rnp.br>
<463tmb$d6s@agate.berkeley.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: po4.andrew.cmu.edu
In-Reply-To: <463tmb$d6s@agate.berkeley.edu>
Excerpts from netnews.comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc: 18-Oct-95 Re:
XF86_SVGA eats 9Mb ? Anthony Monroe@soda.CSUA (1134)
> In article <DGJqKz.2KI@cr-df.rnp.br>, Bernardo Brummer <bernardo> wrote:
> >My 32Mb EISA system is running out of memory. Doesn't seem normal, look at the
> >big (9Mb) XF86_SVGA process. My home system with only 16Mb runs ligther.
> >If I call a couple more apps it begins swapping (actually, it begins when top
> >shows 23M of Act Memory -> where is the rest to 32M), and if I close apps I
> >don't get the memory back.
> >Any ideas ?
> Not really. When this happened to me (on my 8 meg system) I noticed that my
> X server had grown to 18 megs. Hmm. So more than half of it was living in
> swap at any given time. Almost all of it, I would imagine, given that I was
> running netscape and mule (I think) at the time, in addition to the usual
> gobs of xterms...
> Needless to say, I had to kill the X server for performance to improve...and
> since I was running under an xdm, it made it even more fun. Aaah, the joys
> of startx...
> Remember, there's always the old-fashioned way to do things.
I found a better answer -- I configured the X server to actually die
after each user, so xdm would load it again from scratch, freeing up
most of the used virtual The memory leak involved still bugs me a lot,
though..
Try a /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/Xservers of..
fledge>more Xservers
# $XConsortium: Xserv.ws.cpp,v 1.3 93/09/28 14:30:30 gildea Exp $
#
# Xservers file, workstation prototype
#
# This file should contain an entry to start the server on the
# local display; if you have more than one display (not screen),
# you can add entries to the list (one per line). If you also
# have some X terminals connected which do not support XDMCP,
# you can add them here as well. Each X terminal line should
# look like:
# XTerminalName:0 foreign
#
:0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X -s 3 -once -terminate
fledge>
Any time swap starts getting too low according to swapinfo, I just log
out of X and back in again. On the other hand, I think the memory leak
is fixed in a newer version of XFree86 (it has something to do with the
linking of the malloc involved?) and so I'll upgrade when 2.1 gets out.
Speaking of which, will 2.1 install the new version by default, or the
older version with the malloc problems?
----
Robert Watson (rnw+@andrew.cmu.edu) * Double major: IDS/CS * H&SS
http://www.watson.org/ robert@fledge.watson.org