Re: [Evolution-hackers] Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-25 Thread Philip Van Hoof
On Wed, 2006-07-19 at 10:58 +0530, Parthasarathi Susarla wrote:
 Hi all,

 I second fejjs thoughts.

Note that fejj recently improved the patch by removing some ugly pieces
of it. Fejj and me discussed (thinks like) the patch on IRC.

Note that the patch also fixes a lot non-mmap related memory problems.

 Also i have been testing the patch for sometime now. Heres the
 inference:
 * The patch works in reducing the memory consumed during the initial
 startup of evolution. And it does a wonderful job of that.
 
 * The patch intends to fix the overall consumption of memory during the
 usage of evolution, and it does *not* do that. I kept evo running with
 this patch in for more than 8 hours and using Evo as i would use it
 regularly. 

The memory that gets saved by the mmap technique is never reclaimed by
another (existing nor new) technique. Data that is made available using
mmap, is effectively never again made available using another technique.

This basically means that it's technically not possible that somehow
the patch stops saving the memory that it saves. What it saves from the
initial startup, it will always save.

It puzzles me a bit how you blame the increase of memory Evolution shows
you after eight hours, on the patch. How does it do that then?

Evolution consumes a lot real memory when it receives new messages. What
you are seeing after eight hours is the real memory being consumed for
this new information. The exact same real memory is also being consumed
without the patch, there's no difference here. There's no blame on the
patch for that. The patch still (for existing information) saves real
memory.

However. When you'll restart, that new information will be converted to
something that can be mmap()ed. Evolution will, after that restart, not
consume as much real memory for the same information (that is now on
disk and mmap()ed by Evolution).

Me, the current Camel maintainer Varadhan and old Camel warrior Fejj are
very aware of this. We have a few solutions in mind and will be working
on implementing these ideas. The solutions will not require a restart of
Evolution. The current patch requires this. 


This is not a technical impossibility. It's just something that isn't
technically implemented by the patch yet. Mostly because tinymail
doesn't need this restart (and the patch was initially engineered for
the purpose of tinymail).


 (Reading of new mails, changing foldersblah! blah!) and
 more than a couple of hundred new mails later and modifying the summary
 file as many times we lose the memory gain we got initially. 
 I *dont* have fancy graphs to display this information though - but i
 surely have the data and the necessary information i need.
 
 * mmap is *not* the solution to this problem - it helps to a certain
 extent. 

 * Generating message list each we get a new message is bad enough - we
 dont want to reload the summary file each time. 

There's solutions for this. 

 I still have not tested philips latest patches. I gather he has
 improvised on the older patches. Would report on the patches after i
 test them enough.


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Re: [Evolution-hackers] Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-25 Thread Philip Van Hoof
On Tue, 2006-07-25 at 21:03 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote:

 Me, the current Camel maintainer Varadhan and old Camel warrior Fejj are
 very aware of this. We have a few solutions in mind and will be working
 on implementing these ideas. The solutions will not require a restart of
 Evolution. The current patch requires this. 
 
 
 This is not a technical impossibility. It's just something that isn't
 technically implemented by the patch yet. Mostly because tinymail
 doesn't need this restart (and the patch was initially engineered for
 the purpose of tinymail).

Also note that cause of a few reasons involving stress on the side of
the Evolution team (feature freeze and stuff like that), and me relaxing
a little bit now, I've put the work on the patch temporarily on hold.

The current agreement with the Evolution team and idea is to make a
branch for evolution-data-server where the experiment will continue.

The camel-lite-builder tool* will, however, build you a camel with the
summary patch. You can even use the resulting camel with Evolution if
you overwrite the so's with the so's that will be installed if you
compile a normale evolution-data-server. You can of course also simply
apply the patch on evolution-data-server (which is what camel-lite-
builder will do for you)


https://svn.tinymail.org/svn/camel-lite-builder/trunk

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Re: Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-19 Thread Veerapuram Varadhan
On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 18:32 +, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
 Novell already has a bunch of LDTP stuff to test the Evo mailer from
 the
 user's viewpooint - run those tests on the patched version to see how
 well they work.  [Varadhan, those tests are already part of our QA
 process, aren't they?] 

Yes and Yes, they are part of our QA process and with the SoC thing, we
are getting quite a good number of automation scripts that are
compatible with Evolution 2.6. 

V. Varadhan

 Novell, Inc. 
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Re: [Evolution-hackers] Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-19 Thread Veerapuram Varadhan
On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 23:05 +, Philip Van Hoof wrote:
 If Novell wants me to implement unit tests (or other tests) for this,
 I
 will ask for payment. 

I am afraid that you won't get paid as Camel already has a
neat-test-suite and can be used/extended, IMO. ;-)

V. Varadhan

 Novell, Inc. 
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Re: Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-19 Thread Philip Van Hoof
I'm going to attempt to conclude this mini-thread that got extended to
other mailing lists.

On Wed, 2006-07-19 at 02:45 -0600, Veerapuram Varadhan wrote:

 I have created a branch exclusively for the camel mmap summary work,
 viz., mmapped-camel-summary-branch which will help Phillip to continue
 his research further.

I'm going to let the patch rest for a few days so that you can take a
good look at it and decide what needs improvement before it goes into
that branch.

 Phillip: Make sure you don't change the format-of-summary-file too
 drastically, the \0 is acceptable though. 

We have the discuss this :). But lets do that in focused mailing lists
like evolution-hackers.
 
 Federico, I would like it to be maintained and well tested in the branch
 rather then rushing it up in HEAD.  IMO, a branch gives more freedom to
 do such research work than HEAD.  Correct me if I am wrong. :-)

I agree here. Bringing it to HEAD might be to early. Nevertheless would
I be indeed very pleased if a lot people test this on a lot config-
urations.


Thanks for considering the patch.


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Re: [Evolution-hackers] Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-19 Thread Federico Mena Quintero
On Wed, 2006-07-19 at 17:40 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote:

  ... On the other hand, Philip, next time we meet in person I'll happily
  buy you dinner :)
 
 oh ... what about Boston? :)
 
 I'll check with my daytime employer whether it's okay if I can visit the
 Summit. 

I don't know for sure whether I'll be at the Summit.  If not, next
GUADEC, maybe?

[Where do you live?  I'm in Boston this week and the next.]

  Federico

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Re: [Evolution-hackers] Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-19 Thread Federico Mena Quintero
On Wed, 2006-07-19 at 01:10 -0600, Veerapuram Varadhan wrote:
 On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 23:05 +, Philip Van Hoof wrote:
  If Novell wants me to implement unit tests (or other tests) for this,
  I
  will ask for payment. 
 
 I am afraid that you won't get paid as Camel already has a
 neat-test-suite and can be used/extended, IMO. ;-)

... On the other hand, Philip, next time we meet in person I'll happily
buy you dinner :)

  Federico

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Re: [Evolution-hackers] Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-19 Thread Philip Van Hoof
On Wed, 2006-07-19 at 09:53 -0500, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
 On Wed, 2006-07-19 at 01:10 -0600, Veerapuram Varadhan wrote:
  On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 23:05 +, Philip Van Hoof wrote:
   If Novell wants me to implement unit tests (or other tests) for this,
   I will ask for payment. 
  
  I am afraid that you won't get paid as Camel already has a
  neat-test-suite and can be used/extended, IMO. ;-)

Aaaah, damn :)

 ... On the other hand, Philip, next time we meet in person I'll happily
 buy you dinner :)

oh ... what about Boston? :)

I'll check with my daytime employer whether it's okay if I can visit the
Summit. 


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Re: [Evolution-hackers] Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-19 Thread Jeffrey Stedfast
I have to wonder if it's even worth ever merging the mmap hack into
Evolution at all. If the plan is to finish Zucchi's disk-summary branch,
which also solves the memory problems (afaik) as well as:

1. introducing an API for using cursors to get at message infos
2. better designed on-disk format that uses B-Trees


the problem with philip's mmap file format is that the strings that will
be hit for sorting/viewing/etc are all spread out over a huge number of
pages. I just see this being re-examined later to try and design the
format to better optimise it by compacting all the strings into a strtab
type thing.

I also don't like how it has to reload the summary anytime new messages
arrive.

I just don't get the feeling this is really all that well thought out
and it scares me.

I'd just hate to see a rush job come out of this

Jeff


On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 13:26 -0500, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
 On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 18:29 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote:
 
  I'm waiting for the decision (yours) of making this optional using a
  compilation flag or at run-time.
 
 Let's do this in the usual manner:
 
 0. Polish the patch in the usual way:  make sure it follows the
 indentation and naming conventions of the surrounding code, etc.
 
 1. Branch evolution-data-server into HEAD (development, with Philip's
 patch), and the stable branch (without the patch).
 
 2. Make the patch *mandatory* in HEAD, so that it gets a good amount of
 testing.
 
 3. ???
 
 4. Profit!!!
 
 I'd suggest that (3) become write a good stress-test suite for Camel,
 independent of Evolution.  We need that anyway.
 
 Novell already has a bunch of LDTP stuff to test the Evo mailer from the
 user's viewpooint - run those tests on the patched version to see how
 well they work.  [Varadhan, those tests are already part of our QA
 process, aren't they?]
 
   Federico
 
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Re: [Evolution-hackers] Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-19 Thread Parthasarathi Susarla
Hi all,
I second fejjs thoughts.
Also i have been testing the patch for sometime now. Heres the
inference:
* The patch works in reducing the memory consumed during the initial
startup of evolution. And it does a wonderful job of that.

* The patch intends to fix the overall consumption of memory during the
usage of evolution, and it does *not* do that. I kept evo running with
this patch in for more than 8 hours and using Evo as i would use it
regularly. (Reading of new mails, changing foldersblah! blah!) and
more than a couple of hundred new mails later and modifying the summary
file as many times we lose the memory gain we got initially. 
I *dont* have fancy graphs to display this information though - but i
surely have the data and the necessary information i need.

* mmap is *not* the solution to this problem - it helps to a certain
extent. 

* Generating message list each we get a new message is bad enough - we
dont want to reload the summary file each time. 


I still have not tested philips latest patches. I gather he has
improvised on the older patches. Would report on the patches after i
test them enough.

Cheers,
partha


On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 14:46 -0400, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:
 I have to wonder if it's even worth ever merging the mmap hack into
 Evolution at all. If the plan is to finish Zucchi's disk-summary branch,
 which also solves the memory problems (afaik) as well as:
 
 1. introducing an API for using cursors to get at message infos
 2. better designed on-disk format that uses B-Trees
 
 
 the problem with philip's mmap file format is that the strings that will
 be hit for sorting/viewing/etc are all spread out over a huge number of
 pages. I just see this being re-examined later to try and design the
 format to better optimise it by compacting all the strings into a strtab
 type thing.
 
 I also don't like how it has to reload the summary anytime new messages
 arrive.
 
 I just don't get the feeling this is really all that well thought out
 and it scares me.
 
 I'd just hate to see a rush job come out of this
 
 Jeff
 
 
 On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 13:26 -0500, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
  On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 18:29 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote:
  
   I'm waiting for the decision (yours) of making this optional using a
   compilation flag or at run-time.
  
  Let's do this in the usual manner:
  
  0. Polish the patch in the usual way:  make sure it follows the
  indentation and naming conventions of the surrounding code, etc.
  
  1. Branch evolution-data-server into HEAD (development, with Philip's
  patch), and the stable branch (without the patch).
  
  2. Make the patch *mandatory* in HEAD, so that it gets a good amount of
  testing.
  
  3. ???
  
  4. Profit!!!
  
  I'd suggest that (3) become write a good stress-test suite for Camel,
  independent of Evolution.  We need that anyway.
  
  Novell already has a bunch of LDTP stuff to test the Evo mailer from the
  user's viewpooint - run those tests on the patched version to see how
  well they work.  [Varadhan, those tests are already part of our QA
  process, aren't they?]
  
Federico
  
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Re: Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-18 Thread Philip Van Hoof
On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 09:30 -0600, Veerapuram Varadhan wrote:
 
  Take for example Evolution. Using ONE WEEK of hacking, I managed to
  reduce its memory footprint with at least 40 MB of ram.  
 
 I don't know how many times I need to repeat, because, this keeps coming
 in lot different threads and I see no progress to make the patch
 complete. 

I'm waiting for the decision (yours) of making this optional using a
compilation flag or at run-time.

 Yes, I agree, the patch does reduce *STARTUP-MEMORY-FOOT
 PRINT* of Evolution as mentioned by Federico in his blog, however, it is
 *as of now* just-a-hack that the Evolution team cannot take it *as is*.

 Phillip, as you keep saying the patch needs rework before considering
 upstream, when are we going to get it?  Will the final-patch addresses
 all the concerns raised by me and Fejj?  Guess, you are aware of the
 GNOME release cycle and API freeze dates.

It wouldn't be a good idea to glue this patch to an API freeze or GNOME
release cycle as it needs extensive testing that shouldn't be bound by
such milestones, but should be bound by test results.

The test results have to be done on installations that I don't own. I
cannot perform these tests with just my own equipment. I don't have
customers that run Evolution on a NFS shared $HOME or run Evolution 4300
times on an application server.

I guess this is why you wanted it to be optional. I'm still waiting for
your decision of that optionality being at compile time or at run
time.

Note that at run time means that more errors and bugs are possible
(especially when switching the implementation happens).

Also note that after a full week of night-hacking on this patch, you
have to remember that I'm not getting paid to do this. That I have a
daytime job and a girlfriend.



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Re: Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-18 Thread Federico Mena Quintero
On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 18:29 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote:

 I'm waiting for the decision (yours) of making this optional using a
 compilation flag or at run-time.

Let's do this in the usual manner:

0. Polish the patch in the usual way:  make sure it follows the
indentation and naming conventions of the surrounding code, etc.

1. Branch evolution-data-server into HEAD (development, with Philip's
patch), and the stable branch (without the patch).

2. Make the patch *mandatory* in HEAD, so that it gets a good amount of
testing.

3. ???

4. Profit!!!

I'd suggest that (3) become write a good stress-test suite for Camel,
independent of Evolution.  We need that anyway.

Novell already has a bunch of LDTP stuff to test the Evo mailer from the
user's viewpooint - run those tests on the patched version to see how
well they work.  [Varadhan, those tests are already part of our QA
process, aren't they?]

  Federico

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Re: [Evolution-hackers] Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-18 Thread Philip Van Hoof
On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 13:26 -0500, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
 On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 18:29 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote:


I agree with 1,2,..3 and 4. I will make sure 1 will be finished soon.
Probably this evening with a compile-time option (--enable-mmap)

  I'm waiting for the decision (yours) of making this optional using a
  compilation flag or at run-time.
 
 Let's do this in the usual manner:
 
 0. Polish the patch in the usual way:  make sure it follows the
 indentation and naming conventions of the surrounding code, etc.
 
 1. Branch evolution-data-server into HEAD (development, with Philip's
 patch), and the stable branch (without the patch).
 
 2. Make the patch *mandatory* in HEAD, so that it gets a good amount of
 testing.
 
 3. ???
 
 4. Profit!!!
 
 I'd suggest that (3) become write a good stress-test suite for Camel,
 independent of Evolution.  We need that anyway.
 
 Novell already has a bunch of LDTP stuff to test the Evo mailer from the
 user's viewpooint - run those tests on the patched version to see how
 well they work.  [Varadhan, those tests are already part of our QA
 process, aren't they?]



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Re: [Evolution-hackers] Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-18 Thread Philip Van Hoof
On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 14:46 -0400, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:
 I have to wonder if it's even worth ever merging the mmap hack into
 Evolution at all. If the plan is to finish Zucchi's disk-summary branch,
 which also solves the memory problems (afaik) as well as:

 1. introducing an API for using cursors to get at message infos
 2. better designed on-disk format that uses B-Trees

When? I'm also very interested in this for tinymail.

 the problem with philip's mmap file format is that the strings that will
 be hit for sorting/viewing/etc are all spread out over a huge number of
 pages.

My own tests indicated that it's as-fast as the old implementation. Some
test (like sorting) where even faster. I'm guessing mostly because qsort
doesn't make large jumps afaik.

I mostly fear NFS shared $HOME folders.

 I just see this being re-examined later to try and design the
 format to better optimise it by compacting all the strings into a strtab
 type thing.

That would be an excellent idea.

 I also don't like how it has to reload the summary anytime new messages
 arrive.

This is exactly the same as the current implementation. The current
implementation does exactly the same and isn't changed at all.

Look at the patch. It doesn't change anything to reloading the summary.


 I just don't get the feeling this is really all that well thought out
 and it scares me.

So lets test it then?!

 I'd just hate to see a rush job come out of this
 
 Jeff
 
 
 On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 13:26 -0500, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
  On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 18:29 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote:
  
   I'm waiting for the decision (yours) of making this optional using a
   compilation flag or at run-time.
  
  Let's do this in the usual manner:
  
  0. Polish the patch in the usual way:  make sure it follows the
  indentation and naming conventions of the surrounding code, etc.
  
  1. Branch evolution-data-server into HEAD (development, with Philip's
  patch), and the stable branch (without the patch).
  
  2. Make the patch *mandatory* in HEAD, so that it gets a good amount of
  testing.
  
  3. ???
  
  4. Profit!!!
  
  I'd suggest that (3) become write a good stress-test suite for Camel,
  independent of Evolution.  We need that anyway.
  
  Novell already has a bunch of LDTP stuff to test the Evo mailer from the
  user's viewpooint - run those tests on the patched version to see how
  well they work.  [Varadhan, those tests are already part of our QA
  process, aren't they?]
  
Federico
  
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Re: [Evolution-hackers] Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-18 Thread Philip Van Hoof
On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 16:05 -0500, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
 On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 14:46 -0400, Jeffrey Stedfast wrote:
  I have to wonder if it's even worth ever merging the mmap hack into
  Evolution at all. If the plan is to finish Zucchi's disk-summary branch,
  which also solves the memory problems (afaik) as well as:
  
  1. introducing an API for using cursors to get at message infos
  2. better designed on-disk format that uses B-Trees
 
 Let's put that discussion on Pause until someone actually starts
 resurrecting the disk-summary branch.
 
 If Philip's patch turns out to work well for daily use, it may be a good
 stopgap measure.  The disk-summary branch will need way more QA time
 than the mmap() stuff, and a lot more performance tuning work as well :)
 
  the problem with philip's mmap file format is that the strings that will
  be hit for sorting/viewing/etc are all spread out over a huge number of
  pages. I just see this being re-examined later to try and design the
  format to better optimise it by compacting all the strings into a strtab
  type thing.
 
 I've been talking to Philip on IRC, and gave him these requirements for
 his patch:
 
 1. Don't change the external ABI of Camel, so that Evo needs no changes,
 *OR* also submit a patch to update Evo for the changed API.

The external API nor ABI has changed by the patches.

 2. Make sure the summary format on disk works with older Evos without
 making *them* rewrite the summaries.  This is for deployments which have
 machines with old and new versions of GNOME, but NFS homedirs accessible
 from any machine.

What about making an internal little tool that converts any summary file
it detects to a summary.mmap file, and after that never touches the
original summary file.

This will allow the format of the mmaped summary file to change, and
only an evolution with the mmap patches will only the first time have to
perform things.

We can also simply change the file-name and let the older evolutions
continue using the summary file, and the mmaped evolutions the new
file.

The older evolutions will not accept any changes to the summary files
(for example version changes). They will reload the summary file if it
has defects it can't handle, however.

 3. Keep the coding style, variable naming convention, indentation, etc.

Of course.

 It may be possible to change the summary format by *just* adding a
 nul-terminator to strings; that may work with older Evos if we are lucky
 enough that they'll just ignore the nul byte at the end.  This needs
 testing.
 
 I'd say that (1) and (2) are hard requirements.  (3) is the usual stuff.
 
  I just don't get the feeling this is really all that well thought out
  and it scares me.
  
  I'd just hate to see a rush job come out of this
 
 Yeah, it needs good testing.  Philip says he'll cook a patch so that I
 can use it with my system's e-d-s RPM for daily use.  Then I can test it
 with my normal mailbox.

It might take me a few days as in fact I was planning to give it a rest
for a few days. I've been caring to much about it.

I don't know, it might also be finished in a few hours. Oh, no .. it's
to late now. 



-- 
Philip Van Hoof, software developer at x-tend 
home: me at pvanhoof dot be 
gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org 
work: vanhoof at x-tend dot be 
http://www.pvanhoof.be - http://www.x-tend.be

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Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-17 Thread Philip Van Hoof
The lovely smell of programming environment flame wars!

Part one 

As the developer of an application that has an extremely high focus on
reduced memory consumption and as the author of a patch for Camel that
reduced Evolutions memory footprint with ~40 MB (maybe more, but that
number I'm certain of) . . . 

I hereby officially write: If tinymail would have been written in a high
level language like Python OR .NET, its memory consumption wouldn't
increase to a level of not being usable for its target audience.

I could have done tinymail in .NET (or Python) and let it run under the
Mono virtual machine (or the Python one) on the Nokia 770 device.

I officially regret the fact that I didn't. I have no reason not to do
tinymail in for example .NET (I don't like Python, but that says
something about me and my development methods, not about Python).

Don't force me to use Python because Python was so-called the first
higher language for the GNOME platform. Definitely not all developers
like the Python style of software development. Definitely not!


Part two 

The few megabytes of memory added by a virtual machine, is insignificant
to the current total amount of memory our GNOME desktop consumes.

Take for example Evolution. Using ONE WEEK of hacking, I managed to
reduce its memory footprint with at least 40 MB of ram.  I have a
question for you guys. How many virtual machines fit in that 40MB?

Everybody who's interested in getting the memory usage of GNOME down:
please focus on quality code in stead of trying to tell us virtual
machines are the reason.

They aren't. WE, the developers, are THE reason.

Don't blame technology. Blame yourself.


Please do not reply to this message on the mailing list. It's not
intended to be your flame war offset. You can reply me in private.

-- 
Philip Van Hoof, software developer at x-tend 
home: me at pvanhoof dot be 
gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org 
work: vanhoof at x-tend dot be 
http://www.pvanhoof.be - http://www.x-tend.be

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Re: Memory consumption and virtual machines

2006-07-17 Thread Andy Wingo
Hi,

On Mon, 2006-07-17 at 10:57 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote:
 Please do not reply to this message on the mailing list.

Please don't pontificate. Your holier-than-thou tone is tiring.

-- 
Andy Wingo
http://wingolog.org/

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