morse@quark.mpr.ca (Daryl Morse) (11/21/90)
Several weeks ago, there was a brief discussion on stripping executables. dxterm was given as an example of an unstripped executable. Because of the memory greediness of the dx* executables, I thought I would take try stripping dxterm to see if there were any noticable differences in performance/memory utilization. This is what I found: 1. Size of executable *is* significantly smaller. (BTW, I'm running MIPS-based machine.) unstripped dxterm - 4423920 bytes stripped dxterm - 2842624 bytes 2. Size of the virtual address space as reported by ps -u (SZ) unstripped dxterm - 3244 stripped dxterm - 3244 TSIZE was also unchanged. Am I missing something here? Not being a Unix guru, I am not sure if there are other VM stats which might better indicate altered memory utilization. (ie. TRS, RSS, etc.) Are the savings that result from stripping executables only in disk space? I would appreciate knowing whether or not strip actually reduces memory utilization of executables. Please reply by email. If there appears to be interest in this issue, I will summarize and repost. Thanks, very much. -- Daryl Morse | Voice : (604) 293-5476 MPR Teltech Ltd. | Fax : (604) 293-5787 8999 Nelson Way, Burnaby, BC | E-Mail: morse@quark.mpr.ca Canada, V5A 4B5 | quark.mpr.ca!morse@uunet.uu.net
sritacco@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com (Steve Ritacco) (11/22/90)
I've often asked myself these same questions, and this has brought to mind one other. When will Ultrix have shared libraries? The most trivial widget based application is bigger than a mega-byte. I wouldn't mind getting back some disk space from all those fat executables.
morse@quark.mpr.ca (Daryl Morse) (11/22/90)
Thanks to all who responded to my query about stripping dx* binaries. The universal response was that stripping would not result in any reduction in memory utilization, as the symbol tables are not loaded anyway. In addition, John Hoffman from Digital <hoffman@decvax.dec.com> was kind enough to give a very good reason *not* to strip the binaries: <Several DECwindows executables on the RISC platform are shipped <unstripped due to requirements in the condition-handling code <of the Image Services Libraries that are used by these executables. <Stripping the executables breaks the ability of these executables <to gracefully recover from errors encountered in the image routines. <This requirement and the accompanying extra-large disk usage will be <remedied in a future release. <John Hoffman <Digital Equipment Corporation <ULTRIX Engineering Group <Nashua, NH <(603) 881-0422 <hoffman@flume.zk3.dec.com OR hoffman@decwrl.dec.com Thanks again. -- Daryl Morse | Voice : (604) 293-5476 MPR Teltech Ltd. | Fax : (604) 293-5787 8999 Nelson Way, Burnaby, BC | E-Mail: morse@quark.mpr.ca Canada, V5A 4B5 | quark.mpr.ca!morse@uunet.uu.net
klee@wsl.dec.com (Ken Lee) (11/22/90)
In article <MORSE.90Nov20120758@quark.mpr.ca>, morse@quark.mpr.ca (Daryl Morse) writes: |> Are the savings that result from stripping executables only in disk space? Yes. -- Ken Lee DEC Western Software Laboratory, Palo Alto, Calif. Internet: klee@wsl.dec.com uucp: uunet!decwrl!klee
mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. Ranum) (11/22/90)
sritacco@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com (Steve Ritacco) writes: >I've often asked myself these same questions, and this has brought to mind >one other. When will Ultrix have shared libraries? The most trivial >widget based application is bigger than a mega-byte. [I'm not referring specifically to ULTRIX, here - or any specific vendor's product. So don't go quoting me out of context :) ] The thing *I've* never been able to understand is why people use such a bloated massive window system in the first place. X-window and its toolkits has been responsible for making more machines "obsolete" than any other cause, except possibly "operating system enhancements". :) Sure, shared libraries will help make X-windows useable - but what's puzzled me is how people got the idea such a huge monster was useable in the first place. Most of my non-windows-based programs seem to be around 60K in size, unless I make a gethostbyname() library call, in which case it zooms up to around 100K [see "operating system enhancements" above]. mjr. [an "if it ain't V7, it ain't sh**" kind of guy] -- "When choosing between two evils, give preference to the council of your tummy over that of your testes. The history of mankind is full of disasters that could have been averted by a good meal, followed by a nap on the couch." -Me, as explained to me by my wife's cat Strummer.
mathisen@dali.cs.montana.edu (Jaye Mathisen) (11/22/90)
In article <MORSE.90Nov20120758@quark.mpr.ca> morse@quark.mpr.ca (Daryl Morse) writes: >1. Size of executable *is* significantly smaller. (BTW, I'm running > MIPS-based machine.) > > unstripped dxterm - 3244 > stripped dxterm - 3244 > >TSIZE was also unchanged. Am I missing something here? Not being a This makes perfect sense... strip(1) only removes symbol table information left behind by the compiler and linker. The stripped executable is in all other respects indentical to the unstripped one, thus no memory/performance gain. Of course, it's much harder to debug w/o the symbol info, but that's a different problem.
de5@ornl.gov (Dave Sill) (11/26/90)
In article <15530011@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com>, sritacco@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com (Steve Ritacco) writes: >When will Ultrix have shared libraries? When DEC merges OSF/1 and Ultrix, perhaps sometime next year, according to our local DEC people. -- Dave Sill (de5@ornl.gov) Martin Marietta Energy Systems Workstation Support
mrs@mx.csun.edu (Mike Stump) (11/27/90)
In article <15530011@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com> sritacco@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com (Steve Ritacco) writes: >I've often asked myself these same questions, and this has brought to mind >one other. When will Ultrix have shared libraries? The most trivial >widget based application is bigger than a mega-byte. I wouldn't mind >getting back some disk space from all those fat executables. My little hello World example program is up over 5 megabytes now... I wish (really wish) I had shared libraries so that it could drop down to 60k again. Is DEC working on shared libraries, do they know ``we'' want them, do they understand the importance of them? -- If I can get mail to you via a legally registered fully qualified domain name, you could be on Saturn for all I care. -- quote by Bob Sutterfield <bob@MorningStar.Com>