Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!bu-cs!madd
From: madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: X performance drop
Message-ID: <40200@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 12 Oct 89 19:47:13 GMT
References: <1184@krafla.rhi.hi.is>
Reply-To: madd@cs.bu.edu (Jim Frost)
Followup-To: comp.windows.x
Organization: Software Tool & Die
Lines: 33

In article <1184@krafla.rhi.hi.is> valdi@rhi.hi.is (Thorvaldur Sigurdsson) writes:
|The performance of the programs, 
|e.g. menuselecting, redrawing a map on an expose event, drops dramatically 
|when the workstation has been left untouched for some hours.  Can anyone explain 
|this effect ? [...]
|(server - client protocol) or something else ?  I have been concidering the usage 
|of the plock command [...]
|We have a HP9000/360 with 8MB RAM, HP-UX 6.5 and
|HPX11R1 (A.01) Revision 9.1.

If HP-UX is System-V derived (I believe it is), then it's probably the
result of the SysV virtual memory management.  While I'm not sure why
it happens, running large programs under sysV for long periods of time
(more than a few hours) shows significant performance lossage.  I
would tack it up to inactive page swapping except that it doesn't
improve with use.  I'd blame it on priority drops but its behavior
doesn't seem right for that either.

I've seen this behavior under 386 versions of UNIX, on the SGI's, and
on AT&T equipment using commercial, GNU, and proprietary software (the
last had *no* memory leakages).  There were significant hardware and
software differences to lead me to believe that the memory manager
itself is deficient.  This behavior does not seem to happen on similar
hardware under SunOS or other BSD-derived operating systems.

Your plock() suggestion is a good idea to try if you can spare the
memory, but you might not be able to with only 8mb.

Good luck,

jim frost
software tool & die
madd@std.com