mdconfig unable to allocate memory

[Colin Percival]

At 13:58 27/02/2004, Chris Elsworth wrote:
>Thanks for the reply. Is creating 1GB of non-pageable memory not
>possible then? Even if I explicitly give the kernel far more than that
>to play with?

   It is possible.  It isn't a good idea, but it is possible.

>...
>So, in short, is there any rule of thumb to follow when tweaking these
>settings?

   Yes, several:
1. Don't do it.
2. Pray.
3. Don't do it.
4. If you absolutely must do it, make sure you have a serial console
connected.
5. Don't do it.

>  It's a bit worrying that an out of the box 5.2.1 managed to
>crash at all.

   The fact that running out of kernel address space can cause
problems is quite well documented.

   Why do you want to have a GB malloc-backed disk anyway?

Colin Percival