1. I've been wondering of late, exactly what are the operating extemities of LW & what are its minimum requirements & what would be considered as average working needs in regards to cpu & ram (whether that's mean or other please detail & explain with reasons)?
2. And does LW use scratch disk space?

These questions apply to all platforms & should they be different.

I've been using LW 4.0.4 & 4.1.4 (which I heard had a memory leak.)

Using 4.0.4, I notice it uses about 80 GB ram when I haven't been searching & there's just people uplding from me. But then, 2 hrs later I noticed it was using 125-6 MB ram (wasn't dwnlding & hadn't done a search all night.) Presently I'm using Final Cut Pro (a video app) & converting to mpeg2. Whilst LW was open, FCP was using b/w 50-60% of cpu whereas LW was using 25-30%. And fcp was using 42 MB ram (even though it can potentially use over 1 GB.) It seems LW was slowing down the conversion process for fcp. (Once I shut LW down FCP utilised up to 90% of cpu.) fcp & other apps I have are potentially 'heavy' apps as far as cpu & ram needs go, yet LW seems to use a surprisingly large amount of both. Even if it's not doing much.
3. (a) Are there explanations about why? (b) Why does LW use so much cpu? (c) Has there been any improvement in the newer developments of LW?

I use mac g4 733 i.5 gb ram & os 10.3.5
I've been using LW for over 3 yrs but only updated to version 4 some mths ago.

I wouldn't mind hearing answers from people 'actually in the know'! Be that programmers or related.

Salut LODR I think you wanted to say "80 megs ram and not gbs..." Well to answer your question, normally on os x LW should use up to 100 megs RAM... but it seems that there are bugs in the latest java implementation by Apple. At least a bug fix version of java is coming so maybe LW on os x will use less RAM. See there for my source: http://appleinsider.com/article.php?id=644

For LW on windows RAM usage and CPU cyles are pretty low. I never got more than 80 megs RAM used by LW under Win XP and java 1.5. I don't know the figures for Linux and FreeBSD though.

À la prochaine!

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Very quick response, that surprised me! Thanks for both the informed & very experienced & very helpful answer. Any elaboration from yourself or anybody else about some of the finer points of cpu use by LW when it's arguably not doing much? Although I guess I should wait & see if the update makes any diff on the cpu use.

Well I'm no expert in that, so.. BUT the core of LW uses very little CPU for what it is doing. As exemple you can use Acquisition which runs the LW core. What takes a lot of CPU on os x when you think LW is doing nothing is the GUI. I recommend to hide LW when not using it. Notice then how less CPU LW is using. Another way is to change the LW os x theme to a cross platform one. This way you can let LW not hidden and use less CPU.

Bonne chance

Edit: are you sure you are not running as an UP (look under the connection tab...)

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Thanks et voilà! Actually I do hide LW when not using it, as with most other apps. But the changing of skins sounds wise. I thought I did notice a diff in cpu usage when it was hidden. After reopening LW I noticed (whilst hidden) it used 60 MB ram initially before 80 MB, & cpu jumped all around even up to 50% whilst fcp dropped down to 12%. This is obviously whilst the incompletes are searching out & LW is accounting for all the search results. (It certainly seemed to be a tug of war b/w lw & fcp for cpu use.) And a while later after LW settled down, without doing a search I completed one dwnld & another is dwnlding at max (for me) & somebody is uploading (back to using 20-30% [up to 49% sometimes] cpu & 118-9 MB ram. And still a tug of war b/w fcp & lw.) So cpu use hasn't improved & ram has reduced slightly, but LW is doing more than earlier.

Please check if you are UP or hashing new downloaded or shared files. I rarely get over 30% CPU usage on a 450mhz g3....

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If I edit my post I can't add an image. Sorry it took me a while to reply. I've included snapshots of my prefs for connection & the message I receive if I tick yes for incoming searches. My connections window says I am connected to 4 Ultrapeers & zero for everything else.

How do I check if I'm UP or hashing new downloaded or shared files.

Attached Images

lw.gif (10.7 KB, 209 views)

You are a 56Ker?! Also, at least dl the 4.1.5 beta the memory usage is better (but still very high) and only connects to 3 UPs instead of 4 so your 56k connection will feel better (try also to reduce the simultaneous uploads allowed, that way you will send less query hits when uploads slots are full). Also disable to become an UP there is no way you'll become one with your connection.

Hashing happens only when a dl is finished or you added a shared folder. When hashing a new folder, LW indicates something like this example at left bottom: ie 520/575 files shared.

Ciao

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Actually I do get ie 520/575 files shared type readings happening from time to time (I share almost twice that no. of files.) I only allow one upld slot as of a mth/2 ago, b/c I found people seemed to be overkeen for my files whilst it was affecting my dwnld (that's the issue with dial-up) & a LTD dwnld speed (yet I still have heaps queing up.) I had been under the impression I wouldn't need to tick the ultrapeer option b/c by being on modem selection I thought it would automatically ignore me as a possible ultrapeer.

How will 3 connections affect me compared to 4? It doesn't sound as good! Surely it may even make it more difficult in some ways. Could you explain the +'s & -'s of this?

Oh by the way, I did notice when I updated to 10.3.5 & the new version of Java the 4.1.4 suffered greatly, which is why I reverted back to 4.0.4.

The LW 4.2 series will have 3 UPs connections for all and maintain only one UP connection when you are away from the computer. This change makes more clients available in the range of each UP. so the results should be the same. The main benifit is that less people have to be UP and thus loosing bandwidth. The current ratio is 7 leaves for 1 UP. In LW 4.2 the ratio will be 9 (28/3) to 28 (28/1) per 1 UP (should give an average of 12 leaves per UP by my estimates ). This should also reduce the traffic transmitted by UPs making them more effective to route searches for rare files.

Do you understand or I talk chinese here? It's all logics, but if you don't understand the network topology first, it's hard to figure it out.

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