[Pan-users] Re: Pan 0.120 only queuing tasks

[SciFi]

On Tue, 01 May 2007 06:46:06 +0000, Duncan wrote:

> SciFi <address@hidden> posted
> address@hidden, excerpted below,
> on  Mon, 30 Apr 2007 23:24:38 +0000:
> 
>> I also have some highly tweaked sysctl settings that help keep the
>> network pipe being filled while Pan2 or Unison takes its time finishing
>> the single-threaded task, then I see our network monitor sends a huge
>> wad of ACKs when Pan2/Unison gets that task freed up.  ;)
> 
> Wait wait wa' wa' wait!
> [...big snip, sorry...]

Duncan, have you read my bug-report I mentioned but you did not
quote above?  ;)  I even included some screen-shots.

(grrr, the gnome bugzilla is taking its time ... la-de-dah ... ;) ...
... oh here it is:)
<http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=430628>

It's very simple:  When the recvspace is completely filled up (and
read my bug-report for details such as how big my settings are
here), no more ACKs can be sent!!!  Now you can imagine how long
Pan2 is taking to do things in my bug-report, even pausing the
new "download thread" mechanisms, if the system is filling up
those huge spaces before Pan2 has time to pull out the packets!

Caution:  Don't use my settings just in a whim, one must enlargen
at least one other setting so the kernel / stack can grab some RAM
for those huge buffers, and most kernels / stacks need to do this
at boot-time (in single-user mode before the rest is primed &
ready).  btw I have 3.5GB of properly paired SDRAM sticks (a
requirement on this model Dual G5), so I might as well use it up
in areas such as this.  ;)  (These settings also helped when I ran
the "LiftedRadio" live netradio webcasts -- yep that was "me" ;) )

I filed this problem as a bug-report so we can discuss it there
and won't get lost.  I have a feeling, and mentioned this in the
bug-report, that the thread mechanisms aren't really "OS-native"
and might be intrinsically designed that way in gtk/glib, because
we have native news-readers & web-browsers that don't act this way
(i.e. a FireFox download does not get "stuck" when it is busy
drawing a web-page).  OTOH OSX does have a problem when needing to
(what I see as) refresh its font-lists (I have well over 700
typefaces installed here), it will necessarily pause the entire
WindowServer (the Mac equivalent to the XServer, something coming
from the NeXT days) -- but this is not what Pan2 is doing when it
pauses everything under its own umbrella.

This problem is really driving me crazy, and by the feedback
coming from Unison & other native OSX apps having similar
problems, Mac users won't put up with this pausing at all. 

Thanks for discussing this, but somehow we should be doing this
over in the bug-report to keep it alive and to show how many other
Pan2 users are affected & interested in getting it fixed.  ;)