Re: Poor Xorg performance in Etch

[Marty <martyb@ix.netcom.com>]

Douglas A. Tutty wrote:

> Two things:  it appears that Xorg isn't multi-threaded, and that there
> is a problem.  I don't know how to fix it.
>
> Does the problem happen with Konqureror or iceweasel as well or only
> with iceape?

Konqueror has almost identical symptoms, though slightly less severe.

  Do you need the all-in-one-mega-app approach of iceape or
> would Konq or iceweasel work for you?

I wish it were that easy to resolve.  At this point it seems independent of the 
graphics hardware but related to web browsing and images (and not plugins, java 
or javascript).  I can't rule out other X apps at this point.  I've tried 
various browser configuration settings.  Nothing unusual appears in the system 
logs or boot up messages.  I will try a stripped down kernel and/or run a mirror 
of the system on another motherboard to eliminate most hardware related issues. 
 My guess is that I will find the problem this way and it will not turn out to 
be a user-space software issue.

If that doesn't isolate the problem, however, then I probably take a look at the 
libraries. Except for debian-multimedia and custom kernels, all binaries pass a 
debsums check against the latest debian archive. The following command lists the 
libs that are common to both Iceape and Konqueror:

$ echo "`apt-cache depends iceape-browser|grep ' lib'`"+"`apt-cache depends 
konqueror|grep ' lib'`"|sort|uniq -d
  Depends: libc6
  Depends: libfontconfig1
  Depends: libgcc1
  Depends: libjpeg62
  Depends: libpng12-0
  Depends: libstdc++6
  Depends: libx11-6
  Depends: libxcursor1
  Depends: libxext6
  Depends: libxft2
  Depends: libxi6
  Depends: libxinerama1
  Depends: libxrandr2
  Depends: libxrender1
  Depends: libxt6

Of these, the ones that look like they could be related to browser images are 
libjpeg62, libpng12-0, libxinerama1, libxrandr2 and libxrender1.  None are 
debian-multimedia replacements.  There was a big library upgrade a couple days 
ago but I've already overwritten my daily backup so I can't easily revert.

If and when I locate the problem I'll post the resolution here.