How to disable/limit pixmap cache in X

[Jim Kronebusch]

On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 18:39:30 +0200, Michel Dänzer wrote
> On Wed, 2007-09-19 at 17:08 +0100, Gavin McCullagh wrote:
> > 
> > > A pixmap is an image which is stored by the server. If a client tells the
> > > server to create a pixmap, failure to do so is likely to be considered a
> > > "fatal" error by the client. Once the server has created a pixmap, it is
> > > required to store it until the client explicitly tells the server to free
> > > it.
> > 
> > I'm not an expert in X, so please excuse (and feel free to correct) me if I
> > have read this situation wrong.  In the same sense as a web client should
> > never be able to crash a web server, surely an X client should not be able
> > to crash an X server?  I would have thought for the sake of the X server
> > and its user, it should be able to prevent a client from using arbitrary
> > amounts of memory.  Perhaps this is my idealistic or even wrong point of
> > view?
> 
> The X server crashing on out of memory is most definitely a bug.
> However, artificially limiting the amount of resources that any given
> client may allocate would again seem like a workaround instead of a fix
> for the actual problem.

I agree.  I am just grasping at straws here for even a workaround as it seems that many
users are affected by this.  A real fix would be great, but workarounds seem to evolve
faster unfortunately.

Jim

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