Steve_in_Texas wrote on Nov 18^th, 2010 at 3:08pm:


Did you send it directly to me or to support? I didn't see it go by.

In Task Manager there should be an option in the View menu to add or remove columns in the process table. One of the columns you can add is working set.

I thought you were on Windows 7.

Steve,
I found what may be the cause of some, if not all, of your issues. It has very little to do with memory consumption. It has to do with simultaneous exports. I am looking for a solution. Can you tell me a little about the exports you are doing?

Update: Moving the Sesame server from a Windows computer to Linux (Ubuntu version) has cured our memory issue, connection issues, as well as a few other headaches we were having with large, complex applications. The speed of sesame has also increased substantially.

Steve

To be a bit more precise, Mark did send me a beta version 2.5.3 that fixed a memory issue during exports, but we still had other problems with clients connecting to the server after several large aps were loaded. We finally moved to Linux and the issues were gone (and we went back to version 2.5.2).

I'll post more about sesame on Linux, as we give it more time to test.

Steve

The OS commands in Sesame are themselves completely cross-platform and operate identically on both operating systems. The OS commands they represent originated on Unix. Remember that Unix has always been (since the late 1960s) multi-user and multi-process. Windows is still only single user and only gained multi-process capabilities with Windows 95.  It was not truly multi-process until NT. Additionally, concepts like redirection of I/O and command shells both come from Unix.

Linux has much more software available for it than Windows does. Unfortunately, it tends to be either free (most of it is "open-source") or very expensive. But, generally, for every Windows package there are several Linux alternatives. Many of them are much better, though harder to learn, than the Windows program. Where Linux really shines is in utilities. Linux comes with 600-3000 utility programs and there are several hundred thousand available online.

Where Linux falls well behind Windows is in hardware support. Because MS makes companies sign exclusive use agreements, and Windows is very popular in the US, many hardware manufacturers do not make Linux drivers for their hardware. So it can be difficult to get a printer or a camera working with Linux. Fortunately, the Linux community is very active and often writes 3rd-party drivers for popular devices. Also, because Linux uses a standard driver format, the drivers are not subject to the proprietary mess over on Windows.

But, with all that said, SBasic usually runs on the clients, not the server, so I doubt Steve is running into any issues with these commands.

Bharat_Naik wrote on Apr 1^st, 2011 at 4:38pm:



I was looking at using Linux when we had to update our server (Windows 2000 Server extended support ended about a year ago).  I have done a number of installs at home and am very satisfied with it.  I use Ubuntu Desktop, which is much more user-friendly than most Linux versions.  If you have a spare hard disk, definitely download a copy and install it.  If you would like, I can send you an extremely detailed step-by-step installation process not only for the basic install (which doesn't need it) but also for the minutia.  For instance, there is a package called "Microsoft core fonts" that installs Times New Roman, Arial, etc.

Linux hardware support nowadays is much better than previously.  I have had some problems with combinations of particular video cards with particular motherboards -- but the mobos are from circa 2004 and the video cards are AGP 64-128MB, so they are pretty old too.  You can easily fit an extremely robust install on a 40GB disk.  I'm talking The GIMP, full Libre Office, video editors, video codecs, PDF editing, etc.  If you REALLY go crazy with free software you're looking at maybe 10GB of disk space.  NVidia has full-blown Linux drivers, so their cards work pretty well. Samsung and HP have good printer support.

One caution: If you do do an install, disconnect all your other hard disks first.  If you don't, the install will automatically install multi-boot software and you'll have to uninstall it later (which is a minor annoyance but not a problem).  Just select the boot drive during power up or restart.  Linux will be able to read and interact with your Windows drives once they are reconnected, but Windows won't recognize the Linux drives.

One of my biggest "problems" with Ubuntu is that I turn on the computer and about 20 seconds later the main screen is up.  (2.4GHz socket 478 Celeron, 1.5GB DDR, 80GB Western Digital PATA -- the mobo is pre-SATA.) I keep waiting for the rest of the programs to load and then I remember--if the main screen is up it's ready to go.

Go to You Tube and search for Nixie Pixel.  She's a Linux/Windows 7 guru with a lot of Linux demos.  Definitely check out Compiz Fusion.  It makes Windows 7's Aero interface look like a toy.

I haven't tried Sesame yet on Linux but it is something I plan to do in the near future.  One thing I do like is the fact that it won't involve any rewrites.

... One last thing ... In a very soon upcoming revision to the Linux kernel they will be adding virtualization as a basic feature.

Steve, one caveat with Linux (I'm pretty sure it's not limited to Ubuntu.):

As you probably know, in Windows any hard disk location (HDD0, HDD1, etc.) can be used as the boot drive and unless you have an oddball highly custom setup, Windows will automatically assign that drive partition as C:\.  For instance, I have a 1.5TB drive with XP on a 100GB partition and the rest for data, and a separate 80GB drive with Win 7.  I also have an IDE drive tray and sometimes I have to put a drive in that.  So I can select from 3 completely separate copies of Windows.  If I move a drive from IDE-1 Master to IDE-2 Slave, Windows will still boot.

Not so with Linux.  If you move a disk at all, the whole system won't boot.  There is a boot configuration file that assigns each partition a specific ID.  You will normally have at least 3 partitions in Linux, often more.  You have to edit that file before rebooting. Because the config file is one of the very first things in the boot process, you won't get a "Find Target" dialog or anything similar.

One of the neat differences between Linux and Windows is how Linux handles mount points.  In Windows, you can only mount a drive into an empty directory.  So, you can't copy everything in C:\Program Files to a separate hard disk and then mount that disk at C:\Program Files.  In Linux you can.  That means you can have \Data on your boot disk with, e.g., 2GB of test files and then when everything is working, just mount your production folder at that point.  The data in the original folder will be invisible until the other drive is unmounted. No need to change pointers, references, etc.