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Xwin 1.14.2 (64 bit) extreme memory page faulting


I am currently using the X server on a Windows 7 64 bit host for
Firefox (in particular, occasional terminals too).  While everything
works, I am experiencing very severe memory page faulting causing the
graphical interface to appear to hang for several seconds at a time,
and when not appearing hung, responsiveness is very painfully slow,
sometimes to the extent that I will type a paragraph and then sit back
and watch as the graphical interface slowly displays what I typed at a
rate of 1-2 characters per second.  This seems to be more pronounced
with more tabs open in Firefox, even when nothing has been loaded in
the tabs.  More separate windows also has the same result.

At first, I thought I was simply out of memory; however, I checked
task manager and found that my windows host had more than 500 MB free
and roughly 1 GB used for cache for a total of 1.5 GB available.
Looking at the processes list, I found the Page Fault Delta for the
Xwin.exe process was often greater than 10K when I was experiencing
the poor responsiveness and greater than 30K when experiencing the
temporary hangs.

I've also tested this immediately after a full reboot, when I had >3GB
available and >2GB free ram with the same results.  During all of
these tests, the memory Working Set, Private Working Set, and Commit
Size never seem to reach, let alone exceed, 50 MB.

I went through all of the options listed in the doc for the Xwin
binary, and was unable to find anything that seemed even remotely
related.  I am also unable to reproduce this with other X servers, so
currently have to assume it is something I'm setting up incorrectly or
something within the Xwin binary.

Testing with antivirus and firewall enabled/disabled did not affect
the results.  (faq reference
http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/cygwin-x-faq.html#poor-performance found
during searches).  Also tested with and without tunneling though ssh
with no difference in the results.

In further testing, I have reproduced this on Windows 7 64 bit with
both the 32 and 64 bit builds of Xwin, and on Windows XP (32 and 64
bit) with both the 32 and 64 bit builds of Xwin.

machine 1 hardware for testing
Intel Core 2 Duo (e8600 @ 3.3 GHz)
4 GB ram
ATI Radeon HD 3470 (2 GB ram)
tested with Windows 7 64 bit and Windows XP 32 bit

machine 2 hardware for testing
Intel Core 2 Duo (e8600 @ 3.3 GHz)
8 GB ram
ATI Radeon HD 3470 (2 GB ram)
tested with Windows XP 64 bit

google searched used without useful results:
Xwin extreme memory page fault
Xwin excessive memory page fault
Xwin memory page fault
Xwin page fault
Xwin hang memory
Xwin pause memory
Xwin slow memory

Searched the mailing list archives for the same terms minus "Xwin" and
also did not get any useful results.  (nearest to useful faq reference
noted above).

I'm willing to reconfigure and retest with new parameters, but I've
run out of ideas myself on how to resolve the extreme memory page
faulting the Xwin binary is doing.  For that matter, I'm willing to
change settings in source files and recompile, but I'm not a
programmer and don't really know what I'm looking at in the source
files...

Thank you in advance for your time and expertise in pointing me in the
correct direction to continue tracing this issue.

--- Erik




--
"I do not think any of us are truly sane, Caleb. Not even you. Courage
is not sanity. Being willing to die for someone else is not sanity."
... "Love is not sane, nor is faith." ... "If sanity lacks those
things, Caleb, I want no part of it."

-- Alexandria Terri in "Weaving the Wyvern" by Alexis Desiree Thorne
- http://alexisthorne.webs.com/

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