dtlogin memory usage

[David Watts]

Anybody know of this:

dtlogin parent takes 57Mb of mem and then when a user logs in the subsequent dtlogin session takes 54Mb to start. As a result I have problems when more than a dozen users login as the box only has 512Mb physical and 1GB of swap, with lots of dtsessions per user I think we run out of swap and thus processes can't not be forked by dtlogin so no new users can log in.

Phew..

So do anyone know of a bug/fix for dtlogin or is it really meant to take 54Mb per user !!! whne it starts up.

[Marcel Boon]

Hi David,

Which hp-ux version do you have , which general patchbundles are installed ?
Can you find any errors in log files,
What does cmd: dmesg give ?

When a use login, what processes are started ? (customized)

Marcel

[Alex Glennie]

The only thing that springs to mind is a problem at 10.20 some years ago ...
the dtsession process, spawned by a child dtlogin processes becomes zombied and its parent dtlogin process will take over 99% of the
cpu...

Advise is -> install the latest CDE & Xserver patches.

check your users are not logging out of their CDE sessionsimproperly and just shutting off their
terminals..

some tips generally ...

1. Processes which each of the # users would start for each session
would include: dtlogin, dtsession, dtwm, ttsession. Are they affected ?

2. People who use the CDE screen saver through the style manager can consume cpu and network bandwidth (a lot) so many times
this is capability is disabled and the screen saver set to "blank" the screen.

3. With many users the number of stream ttys consumed goes up and could run out. Note: Changing the kernel parameters of nstrpty and npty
does not automatically create the special files.

insf -evd ptys -n new_number_in_kernel
insf -evd ptym -n new_number_in_kernel
insf -evd pts -s new_number_in_kernel

dtterm and rlogins use stream ptys, xterm and hpterms use pty.

4. The use of "backing store" and "save unders" can cut down on network traffic by configuring these on in the Xterminals/PCS, but the downside
is that it will consume more memory on the Xterminals (which is
usually in short supply anyways).