From: todd@draco.macsch.com (Todd C. Williams)
Subject: Re: Comments on Interleaf Memory Usage (and do you want to use RIP printers on an HP700?)
Organization: MacNeal-Schwendler Corp.
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 92 20:25:15 GMT

In article <1992Aug12.003011.16661@spatial.com> alek@spatial.com (Alek O. Komarnitsky) writes:
>We [use] 5.3 ... on an HP710 w/64Mb ... and 2 Xterms.
>
>Interleaf on the HP700 seems to consume a *large* amount of memory, may have
>some memory leaks, and appears to not release any memory until it exits.
>I.e. it's doing a malloc, but never does a free. 

Yup, it looks that way to me, too, on my SUNs.  I haven't checked the
other platforms.

>Interleaf used 5.5 Mbytes of memory when first fired up. We then 
>"custom-resaved" a large (~50 pages of tables, 3+ Mbytes) document,
>and Interleaf memory usage jumped to 28.6 Mbytes. I found this number a
>bit disturbing to say the least. We then "custom-resaved" the same document
>several times, and in all cases except one, Interleaf memory usage jumped
>another 60 Kbytes. Note that Interleaf memory usage *never* decreased,
>until we finally exited it. 

I notice this kind of behavior, too.  I don't know if custom-resave is the
only thing that causes it, though.

>So what do I find annoying? For one, it seems to me that Interleaf is using
>an awful lot of memory. Two: I suspect there may be some "memory leaks" in
>the code, since it seems strange to me that doing the same task several
>times over causes additional memory to be used. Third, and perhaps most
>bothersome, I'm surprised that Interleaf doesn't release memory after using
>it. The result of this is that if I open a large document, then Interleaf
>will consume this much memory from then on - whether or not I'm doing any
>other work. 

Yup.

>As mentioned above, I'm curious if anyone else has seen this behavior, and
>perhaps I should read TFM, but I don't think there are any easy solutions
>here short of exiting Interleaf (which is really an OK one). Pls E-mail
>and/or post responses, and I'll be happy to summarize if enough interest.

Our documentation folks have SPARC1+'s with 28Mb, and about 60Mb swap.
They often complain that something won't work properly, and a 'pstat -T'
shows me that almost all the swap is used up.  Exiting ileaf brings the
swap usage down from 60Mb to around 10, I think.  Restarting ileaf gets
the swap back up there, but it can still be used until the memory leaks
kill it.  These users in question typically like to log in, start ileaf,
and never log out until weeks later.  When I see the startup time for
OpenWindows and then ileaf, I hardly blame them.  I don't know if custom-
resave is the problem, but I certainly seem the same stuff you describe here.
-- 
Todd Williams    UNIX Systems Coordinator     todd@macsch.com    (213) 259-4973
MacNeal-Schwendler Corp. ("MSC"),  815 Colorado Blvd.,  Los Angeles, CA   90041
"The Democrats stand for nothing except 'I wish I was a Republican' and the
Republicans stand for raw, unbridled evil and greed and ignorance smothered
in balloons and ribbons."  -Frank Zappa, 1991  (Zappa for president!)
Xref: sparky comp.text.interleaf:639 comp.lang.postscript:4370 gnu.ghostscript.bug:856