On Wednesday 12 February 2003 10:20 pm, David Dawes wrote: > On Tue, Feb 11, 2003 at 02:51:04PM -0700, patrick charles wrote: > >> On Saturday 08 February 2003 05:41 pm, David Dawes wrote: > >> > On Sat, Feb 08, 2003 at 01:07:25PM -0700, patrick charles wrote: > >> > >How would I communicate this? Somebody on XFree86 working with or > >> > > have contact with the appropriate people in kernel/agpgart > >> > > development? > >> > > >> > First of all, how are you "killing" the X server? I haven't seen this > >> > behaviour when the X server exits normally, and I've done a lot of > >> > testing where 32MB is allocated per run on machines with only 128MB of > >> > physical memory. > >> > > >> > There are people here familiar with the kernel agpgart driver. > >> > > >> > Note that just because top shows that there's little memory free > >> > doesn't mean that the agpgart driver isn't freeing it. Also the > >> > agpgart driver allocates physical pages, never swap. I'm not sure > >> > what the symptoms are when it can't get any free physical pages. On > >> > my test system the free memory indicated by top does go up when the X > >> > server exits, and this is on an otherwise idle system. > >> > > >> > So, I'd suggest starting a bare X server (run just 'X') on an > >> > otherwise idle system, see what top reports, then exit it cleanly > >> > (<Ctrl><Alt><Backspace>), and see if the free memory amount changes. > >> > Check the X server log to confirm how much memory was allocated via > >> > the agpgart mechanism (look for the lines containing "Allocated"). > >> > > >> > If that looks OK, then try the same thing you tried before but with a > >> > bare X server and an idle system. > >> > > >> > David > > > >David, > > > >I ran some tests as you suggested. I started up a bare X server using the > > command 'X' on an idle system. I then exited cleanly using ctrl-alt-bak. > > > >I recorded the amount of physical RAM free before and after the X start. I > > repeated this process. > > > >After 13 iterations, the machine became very sluggish. > > > >After 16 iterations, the machine hung. > > > >Still looks like X (or, the agpgart driver?) is not freeing resources. > >The machine gradually ran out of physical RAM. > > I just tried repeating this with what I think should be an even more > demanding configuration: 845G system with 128MB physical memory, 1MB > stolen memory (preallocated video memory), X configured to use 32MB > video memory, so just over 31MB of physical memory needs to be allocated > at each server start. > > After several iterations, I got to a pattern where the free memory > after the server starts is 2MB, and the free memory when it exits is > 41MB. I went as far as 25 iterations without any change in this pattern > and without any slowdown. > > This is with RH 7.3, using the default kernel plus an agpgart driver > patched for correct 845G support. The 2.4.20 kernel should already have > the correct 845G agpgart support. > > The source for the agpgart driver I'm using can be found at > <http://www.xfree86.org/~dawes/intel-85x/agpgart-85x.tar.gz>, in case > that makes a difference. > > David
Ok. To simplify my environment, I did a fresh install of Red Hat 8.0. I then installed kernel 2.4.20-2.21 and XFree86-4.2.99.3-20030115, taken as RPM's from the RH81 'phoebe' beta, required for the i845 support. So, I now have a 'clean' setup which doesn't contain any of the pieces which I previously downloaded/built from various cvs repositories. On this machine (which has quite a few services running since it is a default 8.0 workstation-type install), it only takes 6 restart iterations of X before the system hangs. I (unfortunately) have 4 of these brand new GX60 machines. I see the exact same behavior on all of them. Therefore, I don't think the problem is specific to a particular system. By using the RH RPM's, also doesn't appear that the problem stems from something peculiar in my build environment. You tried on an i845G and can't reproduce, but you are using RH7.3? Thanks again for your help. ps. if you are interested in having a look at one of these GX60's, i could provide you with a remote login w/ appropriate priv's. i can stick one outside our firewall temporarily. send me an email. thanks, -pat _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
