Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!rex!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!ucsd!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU!rws
From: rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Leak in R4 server?
Message-ID: <9010291312.AA02065@expire.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: 29 Oct 90 13:12:30 GMT
References: <1990Oct28.204148.17437@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov>
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 21

Nothing you have shown demonstrates a leak in the X server.  It seems you
expect process size to eventually decrease.  Try an experiment, compile and
run this simple program:

main()
{
    free(malloc(8000000));
    pause();
}

See if the process size ever goes down.  If it doesn't, don't expect the
server's process size to ever go down.  As for resident set size, I'd say
that's a bit more complicated, the RSS will depend on what algorithms your
OS uses, what other activity is going on in the system, how the vendor's
memory allocator works, and probably a bunch of other things.  I would not
take it directly as a memory leak indicator.

    Mind you, the Sun-3 was mono and the Sun-4 is 8-bit color...

The big jumps in process size are probably due to your having enabled
save-unders on menus.