On Thursday 13 February 2003 09:03 pm, David Dawes wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 13, 2003 at 02:11:40PM -0700, patrick charles wrote:
> >On Wednesday 12 February 2003 10:20 pm, David Dawes wrote:
> >> On Tue, Feb 11, 2003 at 02:51:04PM -0700, patrick charles wrote:
> >> >> On Saturday 08 February 2003 05:41 pm, David Dawes wrote:
> >> >> > On Sat, Feb 08, 2003 at 01:07:25PM -0700, patrick charles wrote:
> >> >> > >How would I communicate this? Somebody on XFree86 working with or
> >> >> > > have contact with the appropriate people in kernel/agpgart
> >> >> > > development?
> >> >> >
> >> >> > First of all, how are you "killing" the X server?  I haven't seen
> >> >> > this behaviour when the X server exits normally, and I've done a
> >> >> > lot of testing where 32MB is allocated per run on machines with
> >> >> > only 128MB of physical memory.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > There are people here familiar with the kernel agpgart driver.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Note that just because top shows that there's little memory free
> >> >> > doesn't mean that the agpgart driver isn't freeing it.  Also the
> >> >> > agpgart driver allocates physical pages, never swap.  I'm not sure
> >> >> > what the symptoms are when it can't get any free physical pages. 
> >> >> > On my test system the free memory indicated by top does go up when
> >> >> > the X server exits, and this is on an otherwise idle system.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > So, I'd suggest starting a bare X server (run just 'X') on an
> >> >> > otherwise idle system, see what top reports, then exit it cleanly
> >> >> > (<Ctrl><Alt><Backspace>), and see if the free memory amount
> >> >> > changes. Check the X server log to confirm how much memory was
> >> >> > allocated via the agpgart mechanism (look for the lines containing
> >> >> > "Allocated").
> >> >> >
> >> >> > If that looks OK, then try the same thing you tried before but with
> >> >> > a bare X server and an idle system.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > David
> >> >
> >> >David,
> >> >
> >> >I ran some tests as you suggested. I started up a bare X server using
> >> > the command 'X' on an idle system. I then exited cleanly using
> >> > ctrl-alt-bak.
> >> >
> >> >I recorded the amount of physical RAM free before and after the X
> >> > start. I repeated this process.
> >> >
> >> >After 13 iterations, the machine became very sluggish.
> >> >
> >> >After 16 iterations, the machine hung.
> >> >
> >> >Still looks like X (or, the agpgart driver?) is not freeing resources.
> >> >The machine gradually ran out of physical RAM.
> >>
> >> I just tried repeating this with what I think should be an even more
> >> demanding configuration: 845G system with 128MB physical memory, 1MB
> >> stolen memory (preallocated video memory), X configured to use 32MB
> >> video memory, so just over 31MB of physical memory needs to be allocated
> >> at each server start.
> >>
> >> After several iterations, I got to a pattern where the free memory
> >> after the server starts is 2MB, and the free memory when it exits is
> >> 41MB.  I went as far as 25 iterations without any change in this pattern
> >> and without any slowdown.
> >>
> >> This is with RH 7.3, using the default kernel plus an agpgart driver
> >> patched for correct 845G support.  The 2.4.20 kernel should already have
> >> the correct 845G agpgart support.
> >>
> >> The source for the agpgart driver I'm using can be found at
> >> <http://www.xfree86.org/~dawes/intel-85x/agpgart-85x.tar.gz>, in case
> >> that makes a difference.
> >>
> >> David
> >
> >Ok.
> >
> >To simplify my environment, I did a fresh install of Red Hat 8.0.
> >
> >I then installed kernel 2.4.20-2.21 and XFree86-4.2.99.3-20030115,
> >taken as RPM's from the RH81 'phoebe' beta, required for the i845 support.
> >
> >So, I now have a 'clean' setup which doesn't contain any of the pieces
> > which I previously downloaded/built from various cvs repositories.
> >
> >On this machine (which has quite a few services running since it is a
> > default 8.0 workstation-type install), it only takes 6 restart iterations
> > of X before the system hangs.
> >
> >I (unfortunately) have 4 of these brand new GX60 machines. I see the exact
> > same behavior on all of them.
> >
> >Therefore, I don't think the problem is specific to a particular system.
> > By using the RH RPM's, also doesn't appear that the problem stems from
> > something peculiar in my build environment.
> >
> >You tried on an i845G and can't reproduce, but you are using RH7.3?
>
> Yep, RH7.3 with its default kernel plus the agpgart driver referenced
> above.  Could you try your setup using that agpgart driver?  That
> might help narrow down if the problem lies there or elsewhere.  I
> don't see how the problem could be anywhere other than the kernel
> or agpgart driver.
>
> David

i replaced agpgart.o with one recompiled from agpgart-85x.tar.gz

% uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.4.20-2.21 #1 Wed Jan 15 20:31:35 EST 2003 i686 i686 i386 
GNU/Linux

% ls -l /lib/modules/2.4.20-2.21/kernel/drivers/char/agp
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        64920 Feb 14 12:21 agpgart.o
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        23738 Jan 15 18:38 agpgart.o.gz.bak


I am still seeing the same behavior.

thanks,
-pat


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