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Date:      Mon, 29 Apr 1996 00:07:42 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Doug White <dwhite@riley-net170-164.uoregon.edu>
To:        Sean Batson <valtech@caribnet.net>
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Netscape 3.0 Javascripts
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.91.960429000303.13387O-100000@riley-net170-164.uoregon.edu>
In-Reply-To: <m0uDJb1-000FPpC@prop>

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On Sat, 27 Apr 1996, Sean Batson wrote:

> Under observation, Netscape's Java interface eats up VM space
> after downloading a web page and leaving it idle; you can just
> see the VM space(swap) decrease and decrease unitl the entire
> system crashes and I mean crash. (A WEB PAGE WITH A JAVA SCRIPT
> SCROLLING DATA ON THE STATUS LINE).

That is not good.  :(  I've hated that stupid scroller down there.   
Now I have some ammunition as to why NOT to use it:  it crashes UNIX 
boxes.  (I have an excuse to turn off Java, now one to turn off 
JavaScript!) 

There has been some discussion that Netscape may use a buggy version of 
malloc() that has a memory leak.  It's statically linked from the BSD/OS 
libs, which may contain the error. 

> Shouldn't there be some sort of crash recovery machanism in XFREE
> to clean up and then RELOAD in these kind of instances?

No, not really.  It suffers from the same bug.  :(  

To semi-quote:

GOOD SOLUTION:  relink Xfree with the -lgnumalloc flag.  (think that's 
right).

BAD (but easier) SOLUTION:  exit and restart the X server every so often.

Doug White                              | University of Oregon  
Internet:  dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu    | Residence Networking Assistant
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite    | Computer Science Major




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