Jim, Honestly, I do not care that much about firefox - as long as the memory can be freed by occasionaly restarting it - I am fine. What I am worried of is the second case - when using gpdf-like apps your only chance for survival is to close the whole session and restart X sooner than your client crashes.
I am not the X expert but if the Xsun server can manage badly written applications then there MUST be some a solution. Or (maybe) it is just a matter of disabling certain extension of X server - I do not know. Ondrej Jim McQuillan wrote: >Ondrej, > >Your observations of Firefox and X.org are spot on. > >When you quit from firefox, the Xserver will release all of the memory >>From the X.org guys that i've talked to about this, they say it's all >firefox's fault, because the Xserver doesn't know whether firefox is >still needing those resources. > >I hear occasional rumours that there is (or will be) an option in X.org >to limit how much ram can be allocated. Then, a well behaved app should >be able to pay attention to the error returned from the allocation >request, and deal with it properly, rather than crashing the Xserver. > >I'm at the Ubuntu dev conf, and we've got X.org guys and Firefox guys >here, so i'll try to corner them, to see what we can do. > >Jim McQuillan >[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > >On Tue, 1 Nov 2005, Ondrej Valousek wrote: > > > >>Jim, Jason, >> >>I have done some more testing and here are the results: >>- visiting some web pages in firefox (like the one Jason mentioned) >>results in X consuming much more memory (50% in my case - I have 256Mb >>on clients) >> This memory is immediately released once you close firefox. I assume >>this is a normal behaviour >>- I tested several X servers connected via XDM to a logon box (RHEL 4, >>Gnome) and used certain applications like gpdf (try to scroll up and down): >>Xorg 6.8.2 builtin LTSP 4.1.1 - X growing constantly and memory is *not* >>released even after you quit the application. The client eventually crash. >>Xorg 6.8.2 shipped with RHEL 4 - same problem >>XFree86 4.3, Suse 9.0 - same problem >>XSun, Solaris 8, Sun Ultra 5 - unable to replicate the problem (was >>working like a charm) >> >>So I think this must be a bug in the Xorg and Xfree86 servers as I was >>not able to replicate this with Xsun X server. >>I saw some discussion and there is a bug in Xorg 6.8.2. causing memory >>leak when using Xcursor animated themes. Should be fixed in RC2. >>I do not want that much - only a stable environment that does not crash >>randomly. >> >>Ondrej >> >>Jim McQuillan wrote: >> >> >> >>>Jason, >>> >>>I don't have any solid formula for setting the size of the swapfile. >>>I've found that just going with 64mb of swap has solved any problems >>>that I've encountered. >>> >>>As for "all situations", i'm sure there's a point where you could run >>>out of ram, even with 64mb of ram and 64mb of swap. >>> >>>Jim. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>On Mon, 22 Aug 2005, Jason Maas wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>>Hi Jim, >>>> >>>>On Mon, 22 Aug 2005, Jim McQuillan wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>>There's just no getting around the fact that the Xserver is going to >>>>>consume memory. And for the most part, it's not X's fault, it's the >>>>>applications. the Xserver allocates memory on the apps behalf, and most >>>>>apps don't tell the Xserver to release the memory when it is done with >>>>>it. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>Thanks for the explanation, it's very helpful for someone like me who's not >>>>familiar with the nitty gritty details of X. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>>So, for now, we have the NFS-Swap safety net, which is better than >>>>>having the Xserver croak. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>Definitely! So does NFS-Swap prevent X from getting nuked in all >>>>situations? >>>>Do you have any recommendations from your experience regarding RAM, swap, or >>>>total combined memory size? >>>> >>>>Thanks so much for all of your hard work on LTSP, it's a fantastic project! >>>> >>>>Jason >>>> >>>>-- >>>>Jason Maas >>>>DiscipleMakers Systems Dept -- www.dm.org >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>------------------------------------------------------- >>>SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO >>>September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices >>>Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA >>>Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf >>>_____________________________________________________________________ >>>Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: >>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss >>>For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net >>> >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by: Tame your development challenges with Apache's Geronimo App Server. Download it for free - -and be entered to win a 42" plasma tv or your very own Sony(tm)PSP. Click here to play: http://sourceforge.net/geronimo.php _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net
