Xdec memory consumption

[Bengt Nilsson_2]

I have installes two monitors (ELSA GLORIA) on my PWS500au, v5.1B-4, 512MB RAM.
When I have set it up like this in Xserver.conf
args <
-pn
+xinerama
-nice -2
-vclass TrueColor -depth 16
-vsync0 60
-screen0 1280*1024
-vsync1 60
-screen1 1280*1024
>

I see that Xdec often uses 95%CPU and takes about 115MB of memory, and the handling is very sluggish.
Is this normal? Can it be improved by more memory?

BN

[Rick Retterer]

Absolutely provide it more memory.

You are running Dual heads, TrueColor visual class and xinerama... it's gonna use a lot of memory.

You haven't said what types of applications you are running and displaying, but I suspect you are also using a web browser as well.

It's probably using up most of the CPU for swapping memory to and from disk.

I'd say another 512mb would do you wonders for performance.

Rick

[Steven Schweda]

> I'd say another 512mb would do you wonders
> for performance.

The thing should hold 1.5GB. If I could find
it (cheap), I'd put in all I could. I have
the full 2GB in my XP1000 (running VMS), and
it could use more.

[VINCENT, Jean-Marc · Accepted solution]

Hi Bengt,

I know there is a known performances issue with Xdec that uses more than 90% of CPU running V5.1B-4 (PK6/BL27) in a dual head environment (PanoramiX).

You should open a call to your HP representative and ask the following CSP:

- T64KIT1001489-V51BB27-20080519 Patch C 2290.02 (The Xserver consuming close to 100% CPU while some of the applications are used. This patch improves the Xserver's performance.)

In case you are also using Xdm login banner, you should also ask for the following CSP in addition to the previous:

- T64KIT1001526-V51BB27-20080814 Patch C 2316.00 (Xdm didn't come up after installing the patch given to fix the PanoramiX performance problem: T64KIT1001489-V51BB27-20080519 Patch C 2290.02.)

Regards,
Jean-Marc

[Bengt Nilsson_2]

Thanks a lot, a call is made to the hp representative.

I've found that the high memory consumption (113MB) is most probably a memory leak, restarting X gives only 10-12MB, at least for a few days. The high value was after several months of operation.

BN

[Bengt Nilsson_2]

I applied the suggested patches, noted some performance improvements, but found that firefox now refused to start with xinerama active:

(mc2-p110)/ firefox
Gdk-ERROR **: BadPixmap (invalid Pixmap parameter)
serial 439 error_code 4 request_code 2 minor_code 0

Firefox works with xinerama disabled.

So I filed a new support call on this.

[Bengt Nilsson_2]

The hp support advised me to remove the special patches and apply the pk7 patch (5.1B-5).
This seems to have worked, the performance improved somewhat and it is not consuming 90% cpu anymore. And the Xdec memory leak seems to be fixed too.