Netscape 6 and memory usage reporting...

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

Just to elaborate a bit more. The fork() system call is implemented as 
copy-on-write, which means that the data segment is shared between the 
processes until one of the processes, stores something, then that page is 
cloned. The text segments are always shared.
Mark Dulcey wrote:
> linuxguy at ici.net wrote:
> > 
> > As you can tell (having posted about Opera and now Mozilla), I'm on a missi
> on
> > to find a functional efficient browser.
> > 
> > I have a question. Output from 'top' reports...
> > 
> >   445 chris     17   0 28416  27M 13320 R     0.1 17.3   0:32 mozilla-bin
> >   447 chris      0   0 28416  27M 13320 S     0.0 17.3   0:00 mozilla-bin
> >   448 chris      0   0 28416  27M 13320 S     0.0 17.3   0:00 mozilla-bin
> >   449 chris      0   0 28416  27M 13320 S     0.0 17.3   0:00 mozilla-bin
> > 
> > First of all I don't necessarily understand why Netscape 6 has 4 processes,
> > but more importantly, each has exactly 27M of resident memory usage right
> > after starting the app.  Is it possible that these are threaded and actuall
> y
> > use the same memory space?
> 
> It's not uncommon for applications that fork to look like this in
> 'top'. Those 27MB are actually the same 27MB in all four copies
> (well, almost; there are probably a few pages that have to be
> copied). I think it's forked copies rather than threads; threads
> don't show up separately.
> 
> I believe that Mozilla forks a process for each new browser
> window, to make it easier for things to happen in parallel
> between them.
> 
> > Netscape 4.77 has a huge memory leak in it.  Everytime my wife starts
> > using yahoo email, netscape grows without bound ( > 200 MB).  As she
> > types a email, I can watch the memory usage grow out of control.  It's
> > as if NS is malloc()'ing 1MB for every character she types.  Goofy.
> > Anyone have a similar experice with this?
> 
> I haven't installed 4.77; I'm still using 4.76. It certainly has
> a memory leak (it gradually gets bigger as you use it; I find I
> need to restart it every couple of days to keep it from getting
> too large), but I've never seen anything that bad. There may be
> something in the content of that Yahoo mail page that triggers a
> serious leak, and it might or might not be better in some other
> version of Netscape.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Mark J. Dulcey               mark at buttery.org
> Visit my house's home page:  http://www.buttery.org/
> Visit my home page:          http://www.buttery.org/mark/
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-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org


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