Re: SeaMonkey 2.35b7

On Tue, 9 Aug 2016 03:13:36 UTC, Dave Yeo <[email protected]> 
wrote:

> Doug Bissett wrote:
> > On Mon, 8 Aug 2016 18:17:15 UTC, Steve Wendt <[email protected]>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> On 8/7/2016 6:38 PM, Doug Bissett wrote:
> >>
> >>>> I have 256 MBs of low shared memory available.
> >>>
> >>> I start out with less than that, after booting (last boot it was 241
> >>> MB). When I load FF, I am left with about 115 MB.
> >>>
> >>> Well, you are a special case.
> >>
> >> Selective snipping to make a point - clearly you are doing something
> >> unusual at startup.  You've said it's not ClamAV, but it must be
> >> something that you are running.
> >
> > Some investigation reveals that CLAMD.EXE is using about 6 MB of low
> > shared memory. I assume that is from the "common" DLLs that it uses.
> > Running the AOO QuickStart thing uses an additional  3 MB. XCenter
> > seems to use about 20 MB. All of that accounts for the 29 MB that gets
> > used between the time Above512Watch gets started, until the sytstem is
> > ready to use. At that point it says I have about 241 MB available. If
> > I start FF (with, or without, RUN!), it drops to about 130 MB.
> >
> > I will need to dig into CONFIG.SYS to see what it starts up.
> >
> 
> I can't remember if you have DLLBASING=OFF at the head of your 
> config.sys. 

Yes, I do, but I think that is part of the problem. It causes 
fragmentation of the shared memory, and that may prevent getting 
enough contiguous memory for the programs. Unfortunately, not using it
is even worse.

> I do and it gave me quite a bit more (low) shared memory.

I am pretty sure that there is lots of free memory, but it isn't 
contiguous after a few starts and stops, so those huge DLLs can't 
load.

> Still, there are other problems. Today I fired up SM 2.5 (Gecko 8) to 
> fix places not keeping history, this never was marked to load high and 
> Free Shared Mem showed a 100MB drop right away, things ran smooth with 
> about 150 MBs free, upon closing I saw the free memory briefly drop to 
> 100 MBs before rebounding to about 250 MBs. I also took the opportunity 
> to mark some of the requirements to load high, Fontconfig, Pango, 
> Freetype, Cairo and Pixman for now.

The main reason why I haven't tried some of them, is that I am worried
about other programs that might use them. If something tries to use 
them, and it isn't designed to use high memory, there will be trouble.
If it is designed to use high memory, it will likely crash on exit. I 
have tried a few things (like the XCENTER plugins), but that doesn't 
work.

> Going back to SM 2.35 things ran fine, history was back to working and 
> starting SM only used a couple of MBs of low shared memory. 

I do notice that FF works very well, when loaded high. Even if it just
crashed at close, it would be almost worth the effort, but when it 
takes out the whole system, about 80% of the time, it isn't worth it 
any more. I don't like to let FF run over night, or when I am not 
around. I do load AOO high, and run the Quick Start thing to keep the 
DLLs from unloading. That seems to be good, but it also uses some 
lower shared memory.

> Later after 
> having shutdown TB and SM, I fired up TB first and then clicked the SM 
> icon (run!L), bang reboot, didn't even get far enough to break 
> profiles.ini. This was with about 250MBs free lower shared memory.

In a case like that, you really can't tell what happened, unless you 
take a system dump, and know how to use it. Even then, I suspect that 
all it would show would be a memory overlay.

> It's irritating.
> Dave

It needs to be fixed, somehow. What I find "irritating" is that I have
watched lower shared memory step down to 2 MB, before a program crash,
while I have almost 2000 MB of upper shared memory available. 
Unloading upper shared memory seems to be where one of  the problems 
lies, so it would make sense to try to keep those DLLs, that use it, 
loaded all of the time (seems to work with AOO).

Other things, like AE.EXE need to be investigated, to see if they can 
be rewritten to use upper shared memory, or better yet, private 
memory. I have been looking to see if I can find a substitute program,
but haven't found one yet. JEdit looks okay, but takes far too long to
load. EPM doesn't seem to use much shared memory, but it will take a 
bit of getting used to.

-- 
From the eComStation of Doug Bissett
dougb007 at telus dot net
(Please make the obvious changes, to e-mail me)