Hi,

On Fri, 1 Nov 1996, Duncan Ferguson wrote:
[Snip]
> 
> > I must say that I haven't had any problems whatsoever with X, and it is
> > all running very stably with fvwm, xfm, nedit, mosaic, xlock, xclock, etc. 
> 
> Can you tell me how you did it then?  More or less whenever i call 
> startx, X bombs out with a memory fault, sometimes gets further so i 
> can start nedit, but so far hasnt lasted very long.  I am wondering 
> that if David got it working OK whether there is a pysical problem with my 
> memory.  (8MB board with 30 Mg swap - I am going to have a closer look at the 
> physical memory to see if there is a problemt)
> 

I think I spot your problem ..... 8Mb ! X requires huges amounts of 
memory to do anything substantial. I used to run RiscBSD with 12Mb and I 
rarely managed to start an xterm before X died (the underlying kernel was 
as stable as a rock.) After increasing my memory to 40Mb (swapped 4Mb 
simm for 32Mb) X suddenly overnight became as stable as a rock as well. 
I'm not sure I've had a single crash since. 

Somewhere, there still seems to be problems with swapping and X as we 
still get reports of problems from people with small memory 
configurations. It shouldn't be impossible for an 8Mb configuration to 
run X  - I also have a PC with 8Mb running Linux, and that manages to 
handle everything I throw at it (even if the hard disc is continuously  
being thrashed!)

Anyone care to comment on possible swapping problems in relation to X ? 
Although I am no longer affected by this problem, I'm sure there must be 
several out there who are.

Regards, 
Rob.