Re: lynx-dev Memory problems

[Klaus Weide]

On Sat, 3 Apr 1999 address@hidden wrote:

> I don't see the URL you were connecting to.  Perhaps the page is 'rather' 
> large
>  
> > I tried to use a freshly compiled lynx (2.8.1 rel2) to access the LSM, 
> > which 
> > caused a surprising amount of disk activity. I checked top and lynx was 
> > taking 
> > up ALL of my memory. I started getting "Out of memory" messages: 
> >  
> > Apr  2 21:02:41 mbrown kernel: Out of memory for ypbind. 
> > Apr  2 21:02:41 mbrown kernel: Out of memory for ypbind. 
> > Apr  2 21:02:41 mbrown kernel: Out of memory for syslogd. 
> > Apr  2 21:02:41 mbrown kernel: Out of memory for update. 
> > Apr  2 21:02:41 mbrown kernel: Out of memory for httpd. 
> > Apr  2 21:02:41 mbrown kernel: Out of memory for cda. 
> > Apr  2 21:02:41 mbrown kernel: Out of memory for vi. 
> > Apr  2 21:02:41 mbrown kernel: Out of memory for lynx. 
> >  
> > Any ideas what caused lynx to suck all the memory like that? I can send 
> > some 
> > more configuration information if desired. 

Yep, don't expect everyone to know what the LSM is; give a URL.

Lynx sucks all the document into memory (except when 'd'ownloading etc.),
so if it's huge you need lots of memory.  Raw size in bytes + overhead.

Your memory may already have been close to exhausted.  Keep a "top" process
running to get a better idea what's going on.

You can protect yourself against Lynx using up all memory with ulimit
(bash etc.; try help ulimit, man ulimit, man bash if using bash) or
limit (tcsh etc.).  [Lynx may recover when it detects that memory is
close to exhausted, but that's not guaranteed, it may just abort.]

Or, next time you see this happening, press 'z' to interrupt further
loading of the document, so the OS won't have to kill of all kinds of
unrelated processes.  (This works better with a slow network link
of course :) )

You may want to set DEFAULT_CACHE_SIZE smaller, but that only limits
the number of documents kept im memory.

Suggestion: since you're compiling anyway, try the "development" code
from <http://sol.slcc.edu/lynx/current/>, it has various bugs fixed
(and you can help finding new ones...).

Suggestion #2: don't assume lynx is only (or even primarily) for linux;
leave that kind of thinking for Windows users.


   Klaus