From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Apr 19 17:53:41 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id RAA14538 for questions-outgoing; Fri, 19 Apr 1996 17:53:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from palmer.demon.co.uk (palmer.demon.co.uk [158.152.50.150]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id RAA14532 for ; Fri, 19 Apr 1996 17:53:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by palmer.demon.co.uk (sendmail/PALMER-1) with SMTP id BAA05989 ; Sat, 20 Apr 1996 01:53:08 +0100 (BST) To: valtech@caribnet.net (Sean Batson) cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG From: "Gary Palmer" Subject: Re: Virtual Memory In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 19 Apr 1996 20:33:00 EDT." Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 01:53:08 +0100 Message-ID: <5987.829961588@palmer.demon.co.uk> Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Sean Batson wrote in message ID : > When using X windows with Netscape running, I found that the virtual > memory was being used up and not being paged out after quiting from > the Netscape browser. Is there a memory manager for X windows? The only > way I can recover my VM is terminating the Xwindows interface and > restarting. The problem is Netscape is doing a lot of bitmap operations and the default malloc in all releases to date has a memory leak in it, meaning programs (like the X server) eat up memory when forced to do heavy malloc/free cycles. Later releases of the X server use a different malloc which partially solves this problem, and a totally new malloc will be present in 2.2 which is even more efficient. If you want, you can build your own X server (and make it smaller as you can cut out the drivers you don't use), and if you link it against the GNU malloc (-lgnumalloc) it'll go partway to solving your problem. Gary -- Gary Palmer FreeBSD Core Team Member FreeBSD - Turning PC's into workstations. See http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/ for info.