Please do not reply to this email: if you want to comment on the bug, go to
the URL shown below and enter yourcomments there.
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2524
Summary: Allocating too much pixmap memory hangs system
Product: xorg
Version: 6.7.0
Platform: PC
OS/Version: Linux
Status: NEW
Severity: enhancement
Priority: P4
Component: Server/general
AssignedTo: xorg-bugzilla-noise at freedesktop.org
ReportedBy: kschultz at rsinc.com
Seen on Fedora Core 2 X server.
If an application allocates too much pixmap memory via XCreatePixmap, the
system starts paging and effectively hangs, requiring a system power-off and
reboot.
My guess is that the X server allocates pixmaps in system memory, either all
the time or after video memory is exhausted. It continues to do so until
malloc() fails when virual memory is exhausted. After physical RAM is
exhausted the pixmap creations cause heavy paging. With the X server probably
running at a higher priority than other user processes, the system gets
extremely sluggish or hangs to the point where it needs to be restarted by
powering off.
The requested enhancement is to have the server fail XCreatePixmap requests
with BadAlloc before this hanging condition is reached. As it may be
difficult to determine when this happens, consider a configuation file
parameter where a user or sysadmin may set a "maximum pixmap memory limit",
based on user preferences and system capabilities (i.e. real memory). The
default behavior would be to act as it does today. The user/sysadmin would
add the config file param after growing tired of power-down restarts.
I realize that an application should just "not do that", and impose its own
limits on pixmap allocation. But this sort of enhancement would help prevent
the unusally harsh punishment of a power-down reboot.
--
Configure bugmail: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are the assignee for the bug, or are watching the assignee.