trunk/debian/local/FAQ.xhtml
I just spotted an error in the X FAQ. I've quoted it below,
as I saw it in a change log.
Sorry, but procps does not currently report IO memory as
part of the memory being used by the X server. The X server
is guilty as charged. Mine grows to about 300 MB on a system
with only 16 MB of RAM. Of course I kill it at this point;
it is reasonable to assume the server grows without limit
until it crashes due to lack of swap or address space.
I kind of wonder if some dying app might be leaving stuff
allocated on the X server, but it isn't obvious how I'd
check for that... and anyway, it would be a design bug if
that were possible.
Note that procps SHOULD be able to report memory usage
with or without IO regions included, but some foolish
kernel hacker removed that ability in the mistaken
belief that the /proc/*/statm behavior was unintentional.
------------------- begin change quote ----------------------
@@ -1899,15 +1905,16 @@
can't see any reason why it should. They blame X for being bloated, etc.</p>
<p>Digging into it more however, 99 times out of 100, they are using the
- output of top or procps or similar utility do show how much memory XFree86 is
- consuming. Unfortunately, the memory reported as used in top/ps output is
- interpreted solely as being system RAM and/or swap, and that is very
+ output of <code class="command">top</code> or <code
+ class="command">procps</code> or similar utility do show how much memory
+ XFree86 is consuming. Unfortunately, the memory reported as used in top/ps
+ output is interpreted solely as being system RAM and/or swap, and that is very
misleading as it is not true.</p>
- <p>The memory shown by top, which users are misled into believing is memory
- used up by X, is an amalgamation of the video card's own memory, and memory
- mapped I/O regions, as well as the actual memory used by the X server,
- pixmaps, and various other things.</p>
+ <p>The memory shown by <code class="command">top</code>, which users are
+ misled into believing is memory used up by X, is an amalgamation of the video
+ card's own memory, and memory mapped I/O regions, as well as the actual memory
+ used by the X server, pixmaps, and various other things.</p>
<p>It is not at all uncommon for a modern 64Mb video card, to have X's memory
usage appear to be 100Mb or more, when in reality, 64Mb of that is video RAM,
------------------- end change quote ------------------
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