chrome os memory useage

[Trever]

Quick sanity check- do these generalizations seem plausible/correct to people?

1.  Jim dying- not indicative of low memory

2.  Windows refreshing on focus change and general slowness- indicative of low memory

The generalizations are what I've arrived by correlating the behaviors with system memory use tools.

P.S. I don't want to add memory if it won't help.

[Sonny Rao]

On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 4:04 PM, Trever <trr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Quick sanity check- do these generalizations seem plausible/correct to
> people?
>
> 1. Jim dying- not indicative of low memory
>

You mean the "He's Dead Jim" Screen? That is usually indicative of
the kernel OOM killer killing a renderer process.
In general if you're using our kernel, we hope to avoid this by using
the low memory notifier device that we've added to the kernel.

> 2. Windows refreshing on focus change and general slowness- indicative of
> low memory
>

This is an indication of the low-memory notifier telling chrome to discard a tab

You can see if chrome has been seeing these notifications by looking
at about:discards

> The generalizations are what I've arrived by correlating the behaviors with
> system memory use tools.
>

You can try enabling swap to zram also to help with these low-memory
issues. In crosh (ctrl-alt-t) run "swap enable" and reboot

> P.S. I don't want to add memory if it won't help.
>

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> View archives, change email options, or unsubscribe:
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[Trever]

Okay thanks.  Re your kernel, yes this is Chrome OS (not a custom build nor Chromium).  Yes I mean "He's Dead Jim".

I understand about the OOM killer but I wonder if the crashing I often see in media player windows ("Files" to view local JPEGS)  is not a memory issue?

"Files" app/media player becomes unstable (Jim dying) around 8 windows being open.  System can have 2/3'rds of memory still available.  According to top and few other tools.

Also:

Does adding up to 16 GB RAM to Stumpy actually give the OS and Chrome browser useable memory?  I've read conflicting things about this.  The OS is clearly 64 bit.  But how will Chrome be effected?

If I can just add more memory and the problems I see go away, sweet.

[Sonny Rao]

On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 5:15 PM, Trever <trr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Okay thanks. Re your kernel, yes this is Chrome OS (not a custom build nor
> Chromium). Yes I mean "He's Dead Jim".
>
> I understand about the OOM killer but I wonder if the crashing I often see
> in media player windows ("Files" to view local JPEGS) is not a memory
> issue?
>

I think there's actually a bug open about this: crbug.com/168180

> "Files" app/media player becomes unstable (Jim dying) around 8 windows being
> open. System can have 2/3'rds of memory still available. According to top
> and few other tools.
>
> Also:
>
> Does adding up to 16 GB RAM to Stumpy actually give the OS and Chrome
> browser useable memory? I've read conflicting things about this. The OS is
> clearly 64 bit. But how will Chrome be effected?
>

Yes it would help with tab discards and He's dead jim in general.
I'm not sure if it would help in the particular case of this bug, but
it's very possible.

[Trever]

(sorry, I keep forgetting to not top post)

On Friday, January 18, 2013 5:20:01 PM UTC-8, Sonny Rao wrote:

> I understand about the OOM killer but I wonder if the crashing I often see
> in media player windows ("Files" to view local JPEGS)  is not a memory
> issue?
>

I think there's actually a bug open about this: crbug.com/168180

Hmm.... restricted access bug?  Can't view it (403 error).

It seems like I'm hitting a bug not low memory, yes.

Yes it would help with tab discards and He's dead jim in general.
I'm not sure if it would help in the particular case of this bug, but
it's very possible.

Alright, good to know.

about://discards seems useful.  Looks like I could use more memory, apart from the media player possible bug(s).

 

[T N]

On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 6:01 PM, Mike Frysinger <vap...@google.com> wrote:

he's dead Jim should be due to low men, but we don't generally show that on CrOS anymore. instead we do the tab reload automatically (the white screen refresh you described).

if something crashed, you'll see an aw snap tab instead.
-mike

I recall that distinction but you've got me wondering if I'm consistently noticing which message I'm actually seeing.  I'll remember now...

[Mike Frysinger]

he's dead Jim should be due to low men, but we don't generally show
that on CrOS anymore. instead we do the tab reload automatically (the
white screen refresh you described).

if something crashed, you'll see an aw snap tab instead.

-mike (resent with correct @from)

[Isaac Xin Pei]

I experience similar things on my samsung chromebook (arm) too - sometimes it's the dead screen, sometimes it's the tab reloading. From a background of linux desktop user, those thing I didn't experience for desktop such as chromium /chrome on gnome/xfce etc, yet, with the same amount of ram (2g), I experienced it on chromebook : if i have about say 12 tabs opens... tab reload is sometimes annoying as i switch back and forth between different tabs: I would hope to have the experience such as a desktop computer, there would be little lapse between the switch and seeing the content ...

it seems to be at the moment that simply binding chrome to a desktop such as xfce is a more responsive environment for me 

Best, Isaac

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Isaac Xin Pei,
- "A word fitly spoken Is like apples of gold in network of silver. " Proverbs 25:11

[Chris Masone]

I know someone at the office who's put 16GB in his chromebox, and he is very happy with it in general, BUT he did come in one day complaining of flaky, weird behavior and we figured out that it was because he'd piled a buncha stuff on top of his device and it was overheating.  The device as shipped would have been OK, but the added RAM caused there to be extra heat, and covering up the machine with crap trapped it :-)

It was fine with the extra RAM, as long as it was able to ventilate.  YMMV, of course :-)

--

[Trever]

Ah!!!!!!!

Now we're really getting somewhere.

I have actually posted once maybe even twice about this whole topic before, and as luck has it now people are piling on.  Good.

I would just buy the memory and be done with it, but what exercises me is precisely a heat concern.  That's why I'm posting about this.

I'm a real fuss budget about fan noise.  Stumpy is usually inaudible.  I am afraid giving it the RAM upgrade will make it noisy.

Sounds like there is *indeed* a need to weigh the benefits of more RAM with the downside that the box likely will run hotter -->  fan noise (at minimum, errors at worst).

I actually have three of these things and stack them.  I have noticed (very surprisingly) that it seems like the lower ones actually kick the fan on more.  Hard to know because of activity differences and they are each on different OS channels, but this ads evidence that the lower ones aren't cooling as well.  I might have thought the upper ones would receive too much heat from below.  But I guess a lot of heat can just convect out the top.  The fan holes are down below.

[Trever]

So did he notice if the box was running the fan more often and at a higher rate when there was no crap on the machine?

I.e. was it noiser?

On Saturday, January 19, 2013 1:54:38 PM UTC-8, Chris Masone wrote: