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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!platinum.sge.net!como.dpie.gov.au!news.gan.net.au!act.news.telstra.net!vic.news.telstra.net!news.mira.net.au!news.netspace.net.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!newbabylon.rs.itd.umich.edu!not-for-mail From: Timothy Watson <tmwatson@pita.ccs.itd.umich.edu> Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.linux.x,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.os.linux.advocacy Subject: Re: Linux needs more work to be done! Date: 28 Jun 1997 08:09:31 -0400 Organization: What am I doing? Lines: 39 Message-ID: <xdo4taj2akk.fsf@pita.ccs.itd.umich.edu> References: <5oqbad$1582@ds2.acs.ucalgary.ca> <xdoradosk1v.fsf@bagel.rs.itd.umich.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: pita.ccs.itd.umich.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.4.37/XEmacs 19.15 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit:9700 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:43686 comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc:1291 comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy:64729 comp.os.linux.x:65296 comp.os.linux.setup:118920 comp.os.linux.advocacy:103568 Timothy Watson <tmwatson@bagel.rs.itd.umich.edu> writes: > cjtan@acs.ucalgary.ca writes: > > I have just put Linux to the ultimate memory management test: start > > up X and then start up a lot of small simple programs from there > > until the physical memory is filled up, then fill up the swap space > > too. In my case, I just started a lot of xterm and emacs. At one > > point, when you can't start any more programs, try to shutdown X. > > It is supposed to shutdown all the programs openned in X and then > > shutdown X, returning to the command line. But guess what happened: > > the machine freezes up! My question now is: is this a sign of good ... I'm starting to wonder, how did you "start up" the programs? Testing I did: A forkbomb on Xfree 3.2, experimental kernel 2.1.35 + fixes + pre-2.1.36 patch (which came out 2 days after 2.1.35 and appeared to be bug-fixes), gave: #!/bin/sh xterm & forkbomb & results: - <CTRL>-<ALT>-<BACKSPACE> is indeed disabled in favor of managing all the new xterms created. Creation of Xterms slows down, at one point there was a 20-second or so pause, I guess things were being flushed to disk, and eventually, X was killed. Memory-allocation issues do exist, if you have looked at the kernel mailing list bit (one is the killing of system daemons, which should really be rewritten to be tolerant of memory allocation failures. Another, is ISA only works w/ mem freed in the lowest 16 Megs. A third is that there are a few kernel drivers, notoriously ftape, that require a bigger allocation that the kernel can guarantee to kernel drivers at one time). -- ________________________________________________________________________ T i m o t h y W a t s o n tmwatson@junkmail.umich.edu (get rid of junkmail!) __/| Something there is that doesn't love a wall, that wants it down