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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!jtsv16!geac!maccs!antel!mike
From: mike@antel.uucp (Michael Borza)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386,comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: ISC X11R3 runs out of resources, but which ones?
Message-ID: <1990Feb20.183105.4233@antel.uucp>
Date: 20 Feb 90 18:31:05 GMT
References: <1537@redsox.bsw.com>
Reply-To: mike@antel.uucp (Michael Borza)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Antel Optronics Inc., Burlington, Ontario, Canada
Lines: 49

In article <1537@redsox.bsw.com> campbell@redsox.bsw.com (Larry Campbell) writes:
>(System: 386/ix running ISC X11R3 V1.1 on vanilla VGA)
>
>Inevitably, after using X for a while,I lose the ability to open new
>connections to my server.  When I try to start a new application, I get, for
>example:
>
>	/usr2/campbell> xrdb -query
>	xrdb: No such device or address
>	xrdb: Can't open display 'unix:0'
>	/usr2/campbell>
>
>I suspect I'm running out of some resource, because if I reboot my system
>I can successfully start all the applications I was originally trying and
>failing to.
>
>I have checked streams resources with /etc/crash -- I've never run out
>of any stream buffers.  Here's the strstat output:

Nonetheless, streams is what you're running out of.  There is a bug in
the ISC X-Server Xvga which eats one stream each time the server dies.
(Actually, I can't say with authority that the problem is with Xvga, but
it manifests itself when the Xvga server dies.)  A simple experiment will
suffice to convince yourself that this is the case: run `netstat -imn' and
node the number of streams `inuse'; then by hand with xinit, or with xdm,
start Xvga, then kill it; re-run `netstat -imn'.  The number of streams
`inuse' should increase by one each time you start a new server.  I know
that this is the case with Xvga from the ISC X Runtime 1.0.0 release. I
can't comment on any other server as I've never run them (except Xhrc
too briefly to observe this problem).  This cost us a substantial amount
of effort to isolate here.  I've never run crash to try to isolate this.
It's now been a long time since we encountered this-- we bumped NSTREAM
in mtune, and now take our systems down every two weeks or so to avoid
it.  At any rate, from what I recall about this problem from when we did
isolate it, you won't actually be out of stream buffers, there just won't
be enough to start the server.  (We figured it out by looking at the
difference between inuse streams with and without the X-Server running.)
Could it be that the server looks for the number of streams it needs prior
to trying to allocate them, then fails if it wouldn't get them?

Anyone at ISC care to comment on this layman's guess at what's going on
here?

mike borza.
-- 
Michael Borza              Antel Optronics Inc.
(416)335-5507              3325B Mainway, Burlington, Ont., Canada  L7M 1A6
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