I'm running XFree86-4.2.99.901 on a 2.4.20-2.34 kernel on a Dell GX60 with intel extreme graphics (i810 driver).
If I repeatedly kill and restart X, the system eventually slows to a crawl before hanging. Here's what seems to be going on... If I run top on the machine and observe the amount of memory in use, it appears that each time I kill and restart X, an additional ~16MB of RAM is consumed. This particular system has 128MB RAM, so the system lock up seems to correspond to the consumption of all physical RAM. (kernel + base system + ~16MB fb x 15 restarts = ~128MB RAM). Apparently, after many restarts, the X server eventually tries to grab a block of RAM to serve as the video buffer, and gets a chunk of swap. When that happens, the system is hosed, presumably because disk swap is orders of magnitude too slow for video operations. I'm guessing, but this seems to be what's going on. This is consistent with the fact that I don't see any daemons or system processes consuming any significant amounts of memory yet top eventually shows all physical RAM consumed. Consistent with the approximate number of restarts, and consistent with the fact that the integrated i810 design uses system RAM for the framebuffer contents. Is it possible that the kernel, drm or X isn't freeing the framebuffer RAM after each restart or kill of X? Since my last email, I've tried a newer version of the kernel and X, and still see the same behavior with 2.4.20-2.34 and XFree86-4.2.99.9. System is running RH8 with rawhide binaries. Appreciate any suggestions or comments anyone has. thanks, -pat _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
