VM thrashing in test13-pre4 with Netscape

VM thrashing in test13-pre4 with Netscape

[Michael D. Crawford]

I don't know if this is a Netscape problem, or an XFree86 4.0.1 problem, or a
kernel problem.  I hadn't noticed it with previous kernels so I thought I should
mention it.

I'll download the latest kernel source tonight and try it out.

I'm using 2.4.0-test13-pre4 with XFree86 4.0.1 and Netscape Communicator 4.73. 
The distro is slackware 7.1 on a Pentium III 667 MHz machine with an ASUS
motherboard with a Via chipset and an Adaptec 29160 SCSI host bus adapter.  It
has 128 MB of 133 MHz ram.

If I browse with Netscape for a while, after a while I start hearing a lot of
disk activity and the response of the machine slows way down. "top" often shows
kswapd as having the top CPU time.  In one instance of this, Netscape was using
60% of the memory and XFree86 was using 40%.  (I'm not sure if this is the
memory in use or percentage of all available memory).

If I quit netscape the thrashing stops, and I can start it up again and run OK
for a while, but it seems to start up again much sooner.  After a while I have
to reboot.

When it happens, the onset seems pretty sudden.  It doesn't appear like
something's slowly leaking memory.  It feels more like something suddenly goes
haywire.

Mike
-- 
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com/
crawford@goingware.com

   Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.
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