Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU!RWS From: RWS@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU (Robert Scheifler) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Server memory usage Message-ID: <19880926175511.0.RWS@KILLINGTON.LCS.MIT.EDU> Date: 26 Sep 88 17:55:00 GMT References: <1206@cs.Buffalo.EDU> Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 26 Date: 13 Sep 88 12:56:47 GMT From: sunybcs!crovella@rutgers.edu (Mark Crovella) Can anyone summarize the various X functions that result in server memory being allocated (and their relative costs)? Not easily. This can vary quite a bit depending on how the server is implemented. Also, you don't say whether you want the information at the protocol, Xlib, or toolkit level; the higher you go, the harder it gets. All protocol requests that create resources result in memory being allocated, but many other requests can cause allocations as well, at least on a temporary basis. If you look through the server header files in the MIT distribution, you can probably get a fairly good idea of how big things like windows, gcs, and pixmaps are in many servers. We are running out of server memory frequently with a modest number of windows onscreen (maybe about 15). My suspicion is that we are creating more GCs than necessary and larger pixmaps than necessary but I may well be overlooking something. We've had this idea for some time of writing a "statistics server" that acted as a transparent filter to a real server, but gathered all kinds of data along the way. Seems like it would be handy for you. Someday hopefully we'll find the resources to do it.