dave selby wrote:
[...]
OK ... I did not realize that there would be competition, the CPU load
is not 100% so I don't understand why apache and firefox would be
competing ?
It is a bit difficult to tell what is really happening, which is why it
may be better trying to isolate the different aspects and really finding
out who is using which resources for what.
Now I'm really guessing, which is the best that can be done for now.
You browser is getting a 28 Kbyte image from the server 5 times per
second. The server has to get this data, which means disk I/O, which
also means CPU time.
The browser is probably doing something with that data, if only updating
its cache maybe. More disk I/O. So you may have one or the other
process waiting for a chance to use the (same) disk, and spending CPU
time on that. If the browser is displaying the images, it needs memory
to do so. There may be other processes involved too (I see at least two
other processes which in your second "top", are also using considerably
more CPU than in the first one). If the total memory needed by your
browser, plus all the other apps including Apache, exceeds the physical
memory available, there will be memory swapping going on. That also
costs CPU time, and extra I/O activity that itself needs more CPU time
to handle it.
And all these things, the way you are running them, are very
inter-dependent and happen at the same time : it is precisely when your
browser is having to work hardest to get the images, that your Apache
also has to work harder, to deliver them. Since you have a single CPU,
it means that there will have to be many more context switches from your
Apache process to your browser process, and so on.
See what I mean ? No wonder you get an exponential behaviour.
The type of Apache you are using may also be playing a role. It looks as
if it is a threaded version, which maybe in this particular case also
has a particularly adverse behaviour.
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