[lug] Licq process's?

[Alan Robertson]

Justin wrote:
> 
> I just got Licq version 0.71. up and running a few days ago but yesterday I
> noticed something kinda weird. When I start up licq it opens multiple
> process's to run. When I look at it right now it appears to be running in 5
> seperate process's.
> USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
> glowecon   882  0.0  4.1  7700 2636 tty1     S    Nov25   0:00 licq
> glowecon   883  0.0  4.1  7700 2636 tty1     S    Nov25   0:00 licq
> glowecon   884  0.0  4.1  7700 2636 tty1     S    Nov25   0:00 licq
> glowecon   885  0.0  4.1  7700 2636 tty1     S    Nov25   0:00 licq
> glowecon   886  0.0  4.1  7700 2636 tty1     S    Nov25   0:09 licq
> 
> I have tested killing each process from the lowest number up to the highest
> and after I kill the first process it seems to stop working. However, the licq
> interface and icon still remain on my desktop until the last process is
> killed. Has anyone else experienced this? Is it normal? I wouldn't think much
> of this but it kinda takes up a bit of memory for licq, as you can see above.
> Thanks for any help

I have written many programs which create multiple processes (The Linux-HA code
creates between 4 and 10).  Although they each have a resident set size of 2.6
mbytes, I suspect that 2.5 mbytes of that is shared between the various
instances.  If this guess is right, I'd expect a total of 3-4 mbytes of real
memory to be occupied by the whole set.  Similarly for the total virtual memory
size of 7.7 mbytes.

Lots of programs create a pair of processes.  It's a little more unusual to
create 5, but not at all unheard of.  Killing a subset of them would normally
disable one feature or another, and cripple the program, but parts of it might
appear to work for a long time, depending on exactly how the work is divided.

My advice:
If all seems well, let them run.


	-- Alan Robertson
	   alanr at bell-labs.com