Re: tlug: RH5.1, XF86, & Resources

[Scott Stone <sstone@example.com>]

On Sat, 5 Dec 1998, JS Bennett wrote:

> 
> Hi all;
> 
> I've been running RH5.1 on a Pentium100/32meg system now for a
> month or two;  I just had a few questions about normal/abnormal
> resource usage, and what kind of performance I should expect from
> such a system.
> 
> Its happened on a few occasions, today being one of them, where my
> system just bogged down and locked up.  The cpu useage would
> suddenly begin to climb for no apparent reason (no new
> applications being started up, for instance).  Today's instance
> involved 4 or 5 Netscape 4.5 windows being open (one off of the
> localhost displaying a postgre/php database), along with NS mail. 
> While surfing, the cpu began to bog down, the resource indicator
> glowing red, though there was no disk usage. Even after an hour of
> inactivity during lunch, the resource indicator was still max'ed
> on my return.  
> 
> A 'ps aux' showed Netscape hogging about 58% of the cpu time, with
> Xwrapper using about 18%  (about the same as now , after I was
> forced to reboot via the on/off switch - the system eventually
> locked up). There were a few process in the 1-2% range, everything
> else 0%. 

If you had that much NS stuff open, I'm not surprised.  It was going to
swap, and going there gleefully and often.  Does RH ship a glibc-linked NS
4.5?  that thing leaks memory like a sieve (the libc5 version is a little
better, but not that much).  I bet it wouldn't happen if you didn't use
netscape (or got more RAM..?)

Windows netscape has more people debugging it, so it's more robust at
present.  I'm almost 100% sure that this is a netscape issue, not a Linux
issue or a hardware issue.

--------------------------------------------------
Scott M. Stone <sstone@example.com, sstone@example.com>
Head of TurboLinux Development/Systems Administrator
Pacific HiTech, Inc (USA) / Pacific HiTech, KK (Japan)


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