Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!LARRY.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU!mouse
From: mouse@LARRY.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU (der Mouse)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: XSun server
Message-ID: <8911090755.AA19146@Larry.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
Date: 9 Nov 89 07:55:59 GMT
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 34

> X11R3, patch level 9 + Purdue speed-ups, on a Sun 3/60 running
> sunOS3.5 or 4.0 (occurs on both).

> The message occurs after I have the following on the screen:
> 14 xterms doing various things,
> 1 xload
> 1 xbiff
> 1 xpostit with 15 notes (independant windows)

Ah, 17 server connections.

What is almost certainly happening is that the X server is running out
of file descriptors.  Its limit is 20; subtract 3 for stdin, stdout,
and stderr, and you get 17.  (Where have I seen that number before? :-)

Under release 3.5, you can't do anything about this unless you have
kernel source, and even then, you can't raise it higher than 31 or
maybe 32.  Under release 4, you can probably raise it much higher, but
I don't know more than that - the kernel architecture is all different
and I don't know how the file descriptor handling works.  Someone from
Sun can probably tell us (hint hint?).

If you really really have to raise this limit, it's possible to hack
the server to spawn off multiplexor processes to help handle all the
network connections.  I've never tried it, but feel certain it must be
possible.  It might even be fairly easy.  Someday I suppose I shall
have a stab at it; it certainly is the sort of thing that Ought To Be
Done.  (X group: fixed in R4 maybe?  If I do it for R3, would it be of
any use for R4?)

					der Mouse

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			new: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu