Dirk Munk wrote:
Paul B. Gallagher wrote:
Dirk Munk wrote:
Paul B. Gallagher wrote:
Dirk Munk wrote:
Paul B. Gallagher wrote:
Dirk Munk wrote:
Also, keep in mind that the memory cache setting is a maximum
value that Seamonkey can use. At the moment I have the cache
setting at 4 GB, but when I look at the task manager, the whole
application uses about 3.6 GB, That means Seamonkey is only using
a fraction of that allowed 4 GB.
I have 8 GB of RAM, but SM doesn't come anywhere near that. When I
have a lot going on, it seems to peak in the high one-gig or the
low two-gig range (maybe I'm not pushing it as hard as you do). At
any rate, that's not a limiting factor for me. (FWIW, I "let
SeaMonkey manage the size of my cache," but as noted upthread
that's the disk cache.)
But I have noticed that there does seem to be a cap on CPU usage.
When it gets to about 25%, SM slows to a crawl or even hangs (the
cursor turns to a spinning ring and the screen goes pale in Win7),
and the only solutions are either force-close it through Windows
or wait three to five minutes until it thinks things though. This
even happens when there are plenty of CPU cycles available. Other
apps are unaffected, so I just switch to another and do something
useful while I'm waiting.
In that case try to change the memory cache by using about:config.
Look for the entry browser.cache.memory.capacity, it most likely
shows 200000. Change it to 524288 (512 MB) or 1048576 (1 GB), and
see what happens. As you can see, I like to use values based on
powers of 2.
Uh, what would that have to do with a CPU usage cap?
Caching to disk means reading and writing to disk, moving data around
etc. That can be very CPU intensive, certainly when it's becoming
very difficult to do so.
OK, so the workaround for the CPU cap is to use less CPU time? And the
way to do that is to reduce disk caching (which I'm probably not doing
since I have 5-6 GB of RAM free) by increasing memory cache? I'm not
hearing any disk thrashing at those times. And why would it be
"becoming very difficult to do so"? I've got a terabyte of free disk
space.
And yes, my browser.cache.memory.capacity is set to the default 200,000.
Let me tell you a nice story. Once I walked into one of the many rooms
where the the computer systems of our company were controlled. There was
a PC screen showing information about one of the computer systems. I
asked one of the operators if they had a problem with that system.
Indeed they had, it was the tickets system where all questions,
complaints etc. were logged, and it had a dismal performance. They had
tried to find errors in the configuration, they had meetings with the
software builder, and so on, and no one could find the problem. I looked
again at the screen, and saw that about 4 GB of the 8 GB internal memory
was free (it wasn't a big system). So I asked the operator about the
size of the database cache. He looked it up, and said 350 MB, at which I
said something like %$#@@*&^%$. I told him to change the setting to 3
GB, and restart the database at the first possible occasion. After that
the problems were over.
I'm a storage architect, so I know a lot about disk storage. And I know
what the best type of disk access is, that's the disk access you don't
do. Always try to avoid disk access, it is painfully slow even with an SSD.
I totally agree, I've known that since I started using PCs 35 years ago.
That's why I assured you that the disk is quiet. The PC is thinking as
hard as it can with the one CPU and letting the other three sit idle.
Now you have 5 - 6 GB free, so that is a useless investment at the
moment. Try the 1 GB memory cache setting, and see what happens. You can
always undo it.
Fine, it won't hurt to try your experiment.
And the free RAM isn't useless, it's available for other applications.
There are lots of times when I use it. But SM doesn't stall based on RAM
in use. It performs the same with 6 GB free or 1 GB free. It stalls when
CPU time reaches 25%, or 100% of one of my processors. So I have my
doubts that making more RAM available will make more CPU cycles
available. I'll let you know tomorrow after I've run it your way for a day.
--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
_______________________________________________
support-seamonkey mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
