Linux-Hams archive - June 1997: Re: xd700 and Linux 2.1.42

Re: xd700 and Linux 2.1.42

Jonathan Naylor (flea@dyc.edu)
Tue, 10 Jun 1997 09:25:45 +0100 (BST)


Hello Dave

On Mon, 9 Jun 1997, Dave Stewart wrote:
> OK... the way I'm understanding is this:
>
> xfbb checks /proc/meminfo (by what process it does this, I'm not clear on),

You just read /proc/meminfo within a program like you would any other
file. You then parse the data within it.

> and if it gets an indication of low memory... or actually anything other
> than an indication of sufficient memory, then it hangs, waiting for a
> process to free some memory.
>
> Since /proc/meminfo is different now, xfbb never gets an indication of
> sufficient memory... so it just waits forever.
>
> Question: is xfbb checking /proc/meminfo directly, or is it using another
> program to check it?

xfbb does it itself, it doesn't need an extrnal program to do such a
trivial operation.

> Next question: how do we avoid this problem? A 2.1.41+ version of xfbb?

I did a quick check through the patches and the change happened in 2.1.41
not 2.1.42. What I may do later is to create a little patch and make my
/proc/meminfo in my 2.1.42 appear like the old version, if I can. I can
post the patch here as an interim measure.

It would appear that Jean-Paul does need to make a change to XFBB to get
around this problem. It is a relatively easy matter to ask Linux for its
version number, and then take appropriate action. There is a lot of
belly-aching on linux-kernel about the /proc/meminfo change so it may end
up changing back, you never know.

Jonathan

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