I've got a head-less Sun E280R that I use to host an
intergrated Apache-Tomcat server. One of the apps running
in tomcat needs to generate charts. So I'm using Xvfb
to handle that which seemed fine for the occasional user.
Now the app is being rolled out as a tool and the number
of users is increasing.

I noticed some heavy CPU useage and the app is slowing
down on the chart generation. I'm guessing this is due
to the graphics emulation generated by Xvfb. I managed to
get a loaner XVR-500 from Sun, but it didn't come with
any kind of installation or usage notes. I've got the
card in the box, but how do I use it?

Thanks,
Cougar

Andrew Tyson wrote:
>
> "Cougar" <cougre@NOSPAMhotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:3F0201E8.C524C0B2@NOSPAMhotmail.com...
[snip]
>
> I presume that you're running a 1.3 variant of the JRE (or earlier)? You
> might want to consider upgrading to 1.4 where
> an X-Server is no longer required to render graphics.
>
> Andrew

The developers insist on using 1.3, but I have them on an
upgrade plan to 1.4 by the end of the calendar year.

Thanks,
Coug

Alan Coopersmith wrote:
>
> Cougar <cougre@NOSPAMhotmail.com> writes in comp.unix.solaris:
> [snip] I managed to
> |get a loaner XVR-500 from Sun, but it didn't come with
> |any kind of installation or usage notes. I've got the
> |card in the box, but how do I use it?
>
> XVR-500 Info (Installation Guide link near the bottom):
> http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub...H_XVR_500.html
>
> Setting up Xsun to use the frame buffer for headless use:
> http://developers.sun.com/solaris/ar..._graphics.html
>
> Note that depending on the situation and image size, the XVR-500 may be
> faster or slower than the Xvfb - it will render faster, but reading the
> image back from the frame buffer across the PCI bus will be slower than
> from the Xvfb storage in main memory. If you have multiple independent
> rendering processes going on at once, and multiple CPU's, you may find
> multiple Xvfb's run faster - that way the rendering can go in parallel
> on each CPU since Xsun/Xvfb are not multithreaded.
>

Multiple Xvfb's? That's an interesting thought. I've got two CPUs and
plenty of RAM. How do I go about running a second instance? Is it
just a matter of running the command again?

Thanks,
Coug

Cougar <cougre@NOSPAMhotmail.com> writes in comp.unix.solaris:
|
|
|Alan Coopersmith wrote:
|>
|> Cougar <cougre@NOSPAMhotmail.com> writes in comp.unix.solaris:
|> [snip] I managed to
|> |get a loaner XVR-500 from Sun, but it didn't come with
|> |any kind of installation or usage notes. I've got the
|> |card in the box, but how do I use it?
|>
|> XVR-500 Info (Installation Guide link near the bottom):
|> http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub...H_XVR_500.html
|>
|> Setting up Xsun to use the frame buffer for headless use:
|> http://developers.sun.com/solaris/ar..._graphics.html
|>
|> Note that depending on the situation and image size, the XVR-500 may be
|> faster or slower than the Xvfb - it will render faster, but reading the
|> image back from the frame buffer across the PCI bus will be slower than
|> from the Xvfb storage in main memory. If you have multiple independent
|> rendering processes going on at once, and multiple CPU's, you may find
|> multiple Xvfb's run faster - that way the rendering can go in parallel
|> on each CPU since Xsun/Xvfb are not multithreaded.
|>
|
|Multiple Xvfb's? That's an interesting thought. I've got two CPUs and
|plenty of RAM. How do I go about running a second instance? Is it
|just a matter of running the command again?

Yep, with a different display id, i.e. one Xvfb :0 and one Xvfb :1.
Then the DISPLAY variable for each process that needs to access it
is set to either :0 or :1 to control which Xvfb it's talking to.
(Of course this only helps if you can easily set different display
environment variables for the different processes.)

--
__________________________________________________ ______________________
Alan Coopersmith alanc@alum.calberkeley.org
http://www.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU/~alanc/ aka: Alan.Coopersmith@Sun.COM
Working for, but definitely not speaking for, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

>
> The developers insist on using 1.3, but I have them on an
> upgrade plan to 1.4 by the end of the calendar year.


Here's another option in the interim, whilst you're on 1.3;

http://www.eteks.com/pja/en/

Basically a third party AWT library that doesn't use the native windowing
system. You
just need to set the following VM options;

-Xbootclasspath/a:/path/to/pja.jar
-Dawt.toolkit=com.eteks.awt.PJAToolkit
-Djava.awt.graphicsenv=com.eteks.java2d.PJAGraphics Environment
-Djava.awt.fonts=/usr/local/jdk/jre/lib/fonts/

Andrew

On Wed, 02 Jul 2003 06:03:46 -0700, cougre@NOSPAMhotmail.com wrote:
>Multiple Xvfb's? That's an interesting thought. I've got two CPUs and
>plenty of RAM. How do I go about running a second instance? Is it
>just a matter of running the command again?

yes. with a different display number.


however, you will probably want to run speed tests on whether your app
runs faster on that box with 2xXvfb+2xApp, or 1xXvfb+2xApp.


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