From: dsb@world.std.com (David Boyce) Subject: Re: ballooning size of X under xdm Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 18:10:38 GMT
In article <GTAYLOR.93Feb8120103@jade.tufts.edu> gtaylor@jade.tufts.edu (Grant Taylor) writes:
>well, yes, i understand this, but i just started with xdm instead of
>xinit, which i have been using happily for six months, and never have
>i seen it grow beyond 2.5 megs or so. the problem started when i
>installed xdm last weekend... what does xdm do differently than xinit
>that would cause such a difference? i dont do anything that should
>cause X to grow much, just a few xterms and an xbiff or xman or what
>not...
>
There seems to be a certain amount of confusion on this topic, so...
The X server is capable of a behavior known as "recycling". When it
detects that there are no remaining connections to clients, it concludes
that you have ended your X session. It cleans up (purges some data
structures etc.) and waits for another connection. Normally, xdm
causes the server to recycle when you logout, and thus it never exits.
Startx/xinit, on the other hand, start the server when you run them
and kill it when you exit your session. Thus memory leaks in the
server are exacerbated by xdm keeping the server running for days,
weeks, or months. You can configure things such that the server exits
each time a la startx; this is what the previous posts referred to.
-- David Boyce dsb@world.std.com 617-576-1540