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Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!kd From: kd@doc.ic.ac.uk (Kostis Dryllerakis) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: [XFree86]: Performance Problems Date: 17 Nov 1992 10:27:07 GMT Organization: Imperial College, London, U.K. Lines: 33 Distribution: world Message-ID: <1eahdrINNpt1@frigate.doc.ic.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: laotzu.doc.ic.ac.uk Keywords: XFree86 X11 X-windows X386 This article is about a subject I haven't seen much discussed in the newsgroup. For introduction I give the host configuration of my machine being a 486DX50 ISA system with 8MB Adaptec 1542B and Fujitsu 1.05GB SCSI drive. I had 386BSD up and running without any major problems with full sources for Unix and XFree86. Without the X-windows system the performance of the system is outstanding (e.g. full recompilation of the Kernel in less than 7mins). Since the system runs standalone for the time being there is no network overhead or additional deamons running. Under X-windows things start to behave a little differently performance-wise. I know that the memory requirements of all X clients are huge since they keep a copy of the X library in use but I would expect that and X server and two xterms will not be a problem. It seems that if under this 'running' configuration and a couple bash shells to allow for su, I do any compilation of a large program (specially if the program is an X-client) the system becomes unusable. What is more the X386 server seems to grow on size during usage, from a virtual memory size of 1.9MB to 3.5MB after a while (values taken for ps -aux). The swap space provided on the disk is about 48MB (to avoid reconfguration after memory upgrade) so the situation seems unfare. Has anybody else had any similar experiences with XFree86? Is it just a memory problem or is there something more to it? If it is a memory problem then the shared libraries will contribute towards a solution. But what are we supposed to do for the time being? Kostis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- K J Dryllerakis Deparment of Computing Logic Programming Group Imperial College, LONDON Janet: kd @uk.ac.ic.doc Tel: +44(71) 589 5111 x5089 Uucp : kd@icdoc.UUCP Internet: kd@doc.ic.ac.uk -------------------------------------------------------------------------------