NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20/NN_1992_20.iso/spool/comp/sys/sgi/13686

Text File | 1992-09-15 | 1.7 KB | 37 lines

Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!leland.Stanford.EDU!dhinds
From: [e-mail] (David Hinds)
Subject: Re: 4.0.5MM gobbles RAM!!
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (Mr News)
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 92 01:01:09 GMT
Lines: 25

In article <[e-mail]> jrroma@beaker (John Roman) writes:
>We had a similar problem with one of our applications.  After the
>upgrade to 4.0.5 the user merely twiddled the dials and the process
>grew until swap-time and response went out the window.
>He (figuratively) held a gun to my head while I sweated out the
>downgrade from 4.0.5 to 4.0.1.  Once I did that, the process did
>not change in size no matter how much he twiddled.
...
>I don't think this is an isolated example, but I don't know
>what the common thread is.

We had the same thing happen, and traced the problem to the change in
the memory management scheme in the 4.0.5 font manager.  I think the
reason our case blows up is that it repeatedly requests the same font,
but never uses fmfreefont() to reclaim the memory for all these font
handles.  I guess that with the old font manager, requesting the same
font returned a new pointer to the same memory area, while the new font
manager allocates fresh space every time.  I would guess that in your
case, the code that services the dials is allocating new fonts to write
some sort of status information on the screen, perhaps a new font for
every dial event received.

        - David Hinds
          [e-mail]