[K12OSN] Help VNC crash w/firefox

[Rob Owens]

I recall a lot of discussion about 6 months (or maybe a year) ago about
Firefox causing thin clients to crash when many tabs were open.  I think it
boiled down to images that Firefox loads get cached by the X server, and
once the X server is out of RAM it crashes.  You have only 4 MB for your X
server, so it is crashing instantly (images on your home page use up all 4
MB, perhaps).

Have you tried other browsers?  I'm not sure if it's a Firefox thing or if
all browsers will behave the same.

-Rob

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 07:30:56PM -0300, Alberto Castillo wrote:
> Hi everybody!
> I write from Argentina.
> 
> I recently build a micro-distro that runs with i486 w/4MB ram (yes...
> just four megas).
> This micro-distro have a Xclient from a vnc-client (svncviewer).
> All apps run nice and with a good performance, but when I try to
> navigate with firefox, the vnc connection closes and the Xclient
> crashes and freeze!!!...
> 
> Here a only that I can get of /var/log/messages: (I login w/user 'educa1')
> 
> *****************************************************************
> Apr 14 09:23:58 server xinetd[7823]: START: vnc-800x600x16 pid=8789
> from=192.168.0.100
> Apr 14 09:24:23 server gconfd (educa1-8890): comenzando (versión
> 2.14.0), pid 8890 usuario «educa1»
> Apr 14 09:24:23 server gconfd (educa1-8890): Se resolvió la dirección
> «xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory» a una fuente de
> configuración de sólo lectura en la posición 0
> Apr 14 09:24:23 server gconfd (educa1-8890): Se resolvió la dirección
> «xml:readwrite:/home/educa1/.gconf» a una fuente de configuración
> escribible en la posición 1
> Apr 14 09:24:23 server gconfd (educa1-8890): Se resolvió la dirección
> «xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults» a una fuente de
> configuración de sólo lectura en la posición 2
> Apr 14 09:24:25 server hcid[2127]: Default passkey agent (:1.525,
> /org/bluez/applet) registered
> Apr 14 09:24:25 server pcscd: winscard.c:304:SCardConnect() Reader
> E-Gate 0 0 Not Found
> Apr 14 09:24:25 server last message repeated 4 times
> Apr 14 09:24:25 server gconfd (educa1-8890): Se resolvió la dirección
> «xml:readwrite:/home/educa1/.gconf» a una fuente de configuración
> escribible en la posición 0
> Apr 14 09:25:46 server xinetd[7823]: EXIT: vnc-800x600x16 status=0
> pid=8789 duration=108(sec)
> Apr 14 09:25:53 server gconfd (educa1-8890): El servidor GConf no está
> en uso, cerrándolo.
> Apr 14 09:25:53 server gconfd (educa1-8890): Finalizando
> ********************************************************************
> 
> As you can see, xinetd suddenly closes the vnc connection.
> When I put more ram the crash dissapear (4MB more, total=8MB), but I
> really need to use this machines (near of 1500) of 4MB ram, the
> machines are a IBM valuepoint-425SX model 6381.
> A few days ago, I can not neither open firefox (the free mem that bios
> tell me are 3072Kb, kernel 509Kb-bzipped, rootfs-290kb-gz).
> Next, I disable the ROM in RAM and I get near of 320Kb, and then I can
> navigate only in some pages, that have a few text nothing more...
> I did read that is a bug of Xorg, and I did update it, but nothing....
> I have been thinking come back to fedora 5 -4 -3 -2 -1 or RH9, and try
> to get some repos (especially non-free)
> Any can help me? or give me any idea?
> Thankyou a lot!
> Alberto Castillo
> 
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