docs/85733: FAQ should point to /boot/loader.conf for changing kern.maxproc

[Brian Candler]

>Number:         85733
>Category:       docs
>Synopsis:       FAQ should point to /boot/loader.conf for changing kern.maxproc
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    freebsd-doc
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          doc-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Mon Sep 05 08:50:18 GMT 2005
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Brian Candler
>Release:        FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE i386
>Organization:
>Environment:
System: FreeBSD XXX 5.4-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE #0: Sun May 8 10:21:06 UTC 2005 root at harlow.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC i386


	
>Description:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/faq/troubleshoot.html#PROC-TABLE-FULL

says:

  "If your machine is lightly loaded, and you are simply running a very
   large number of processes, you can adjust this with the kern.maxproc
   sysctl.
   ...
   To make a sysctl permanent across reboots, set this in
   /etc/sysctl.conf in recent versions of FreeBSD, or /etc/rc.local in
   older versions."

However, this particular tunable needs to be set in /boot/loader.conf and
requires a reboot.

It's true that attempting to make the change manually tells you this:

   # sysctl kern.maxproc=2000
   sysctl: oid 'kern.maxproc' is a read only tunable
   sysctl: Tunable values are set in /boot/loader.conf

However, readers of this document might be inclined just to put a setting in
/etc/sysctl.conf, and then find it doesn't work.

>How-To-Repeat:

>Fix:

Refer to /boot/loader.conf, and/or cross-reference to
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/configtuning-sysctl.html

(Personally I don't know a way to tell whether sysctl variable X is a
/boot/loader.conf tunable or an /etc/sysctl.conf frob other than trying to
change it. If there's a better way, please document that too :-)
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: