The Tor Browser / file revision

                  Gross Dynamic Footprint Reports

              Chris Waterson <waterson@netscape.com>

                       November 16, 2000

 This is a short primer on how to run the ``gross dynamic footprint''

 reports.

 Win32

 -----

 I've tried this on Win2K. Should work on NT, probably not 98.

 1. Configure your machine with a ``standard'' mozilla build

 environment, as described at:

   http://www.mozilla.org/build/win32.html

 Specifically, you'll need the Cygnus tools (GNU make, awk, sed), which

 can be downloaded from:

   http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/download.html

 2. Install the Win32 version of GNUplot, avaialable from:

   ftp://ftp.dartmouth.edu/pub/gnuplot/gnuplot3.7cyg.zip

 3. Configure a web server with the ``buster.cgi'' CGI script contained

 in this directory.

 4. Pull and build a ``release'' build. Besides the normal Win32 flags

 described on the Win32 build instructions, be sure that you've set the

 following:

   set BUILD_OPT=1

   set MOZ_DEBUG=

 That is, MOZ_DEBUG should be unset.

 5. To collect data and build the dynamic footprint graph, type the

 following command from the mozilla/tools/footprint directory:

   make --unix -fwin32-gdf.mk \

     BUSTER_URL="http://myserver/cgi-bin/buster.cgi?refresh=10"

 (Replace ``myserver'' with the name of the webserver where you

 installed ``buster.cgi'' in step 3, above.)

 This should:

   - Build ``wm.exe'', which will spy on memory usage.

   - Run the winEmbed program over the top 100 URLs (from top100.txt)

     to generate a file called ``winEmbed.dat''

   - Run mozilla over the top 100 URLs to generate a file called

     ``mozilla.dat''

   - Use gnuplot to create a PNG image file called win32-gdf.png

 Linux

 -----

 1. Configure your machine with a ``standard'' mozilla build

 environment, as described at:

   http://www.mozilla.org/build/unix.html

 2. Install GNUplot, which is available as an RPM on RedHat-6.2 CDs

 (probably others, as well).

 3. Configure a web server with the ``buster.cgi'' CGI script contained

 in this directory.

 4. Pull and build a ``release build''. Here are the settings you

 should use in your .mozconfig file:

    ac_add_options --enable-optimize

    ac_add_options --disable-debug

    ac_add_options --enable-strip-libs

 5. To collect data and build the dynamic footprint graph, type the

 following command from the mozilla/tools/footprint directory:

   make -flinux-gdf.mk \

     BUSTER_URL="http://myserver/cgi-bin/buster.cgi?refresh=10"

 (Replace ``myserver'' with the name of the webserver where you

 installed ``buster.cgi'' in step 3, above.)

 Details, details, details

 -------------------------

 1. When running these tests, you'll probably want to use predictable

 cache settings. You can modify $(DIST)/bin/defaults/pref/all.js to

 tweak settings that will be used by [win|gtk]Embed (these programs

 ignore profile-specific settings AFAIK). For example, I've used these

 to try to cull out cache usage altogether:

   pref("browser.cache.disk_cache_size",       0);

   pref("browser.cache.enable",                false);

   pref("browser.cache.disk.enable",           false);

   pref("browser.cache.memory_cache_size",     0);

   pref("browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl",        false);

 I think the image cache has a pref that you can use to shut it off as

 well. Haven't found it yet.

 2. If you collect data using Mozilla (as Win32 will do, by default), I

 recommend using a clean profile for consistency's sake. Otherwise,

 results will vary based on random stuff like how big your bookmarks

 are, how big your global history is, whether or not you've started

 mail, etc.

 3. I removed the ``plugin downloader plugin'' libnullplugin.so, as

 well as all other plugins, from $(DIST)/bin/plugins so that no plugins

 would be loaded.