Xwindows and Shared Memory Segments


Question

Why does Xwindows allocate 256 MB of shared memory segments when it is started?

Answer

According to the ipcs manual page: SEGSZ (a,b), is the size of the associated shared memory segment. However, this is misleading. The shared memory segments reported by ipcs are virtual memory segments requested by the user process.

After executing the ipcs -am command, you see information similar to the following:

T    ID      KEY        MODE       OWNER    GROUP    CREATOR   CGROUP
m   4099 0x58059007 --rw-rw-rw-     root    system    root     system

SEGSZ     CPID  LPID   ATIME    DTIME    CTIME
268435456 19792 19792 14:36:33 no-entry 14:36:33

Xwindows is not actually using 256 MB of actual memory, rather, it is using 256 MB of address space inside the linked list of the VMM itself, with the kernel allocating memory to Xwindows dynamically within the stack.

The number reported is hard coded into Xwindows. This cannot be changed. This is the way it was designed, and it should not impact your system's performance. This number is on ALL computers running Xwindows.


[ Doc Ref: 97413915321064     Publish Date: Nov. 13, 2000     4FAX Ref: none ]