JNode memory usage

Submitted by Stephen Crawley on Sat, 04/25/2009 - 16:15.

I don't use the JNode GUI regularly (does anyone?) but I've noticed recently that I can no longer run in a 512Mb VMWare virtual. With 512Mb, the GUI starts OK, but when I try to launch the GUI console, it grinds for a few seconds ... then nothing. On exiting the GUI, I see OutOfMemoryException stacktraces on the text console. With a larger virtual (e.g. 1024Mb) I don't get this problem.

I suspect that launching the GUI console is triggering a burst of native code compilation, and there is not enough free memory to do the job.

Does anyone have any idea what may have caused the GUI to start using more memory, and how to address this? Maybe native compiler memory use could be reduced by compiling code in smaller chunks?

The JNode documentation claims that JNode can run with 256Mb, and until recently the GUI worked with 512Mb. But not any more ... apparently.

‹ Let's start our own cult! Are we abusing SourceForge SVN? ›

I noticed a while back

Submitted by Peter on Sat, 04/25/2009 - 22:29.

I noticed a while back similar behaviour. Though for me it was not the total free ram, but the larges free chunk available. Due to double buffering you need at least one framebuffer (probably one for each frame?!) in heap, i.e. a big array.
When you encountered the OOME, did you run other stuff before the GUI? Running gc immediatly after bootup might help as the heap is not so much fragmented at that time.

I always run GC before startawt

Submitted by Stephen Crawley on Sun, 04/26/2009 - 03:42.

... and I was running a freshly rebooted JNode.