Disk buffer / memory utilization

[Eric Anderson]

R. Payette wrote:
> I've read and tried the tuning man page ( i've gained 2-3 M on the wired ).
> 
> This is typical top output during a build process. It's running awfully 
> slow because the system spend most of it's time swapping, while there 
> still is that  14M Buf.

I'm not sure you'll really get rid of the 14M Buffers, but you might be 
able to reduce them - what does:
sysctl kern.maxusers
report?

Is this box solely for compiling?  Or is it an NFS server, or web 
server, etc?

> What happened with 16-32M ram unix servers ? what's so big in modern 
> unix that make it unusable on low-end hardware ? How do you build 
> kernels that fit on a floppy ( mine is 3.3 M and I thought I removed 
> everything that could be removed from the kernel config file )

 From what I see, there is probably still some stuff that can be 
removed.  Do you need eisa support?  NFS?  MSDOSFS?  IPV6?


> freebsd 5.3rc1
> p2 350
> de ethernet card ( generic dec 21041 card )
> ide 4.3G hd
> 64M ram
> kernel config : http://massonerie.kicks-ass.org/kc

Can you send (or post on the net somewhere) the output of:

ps -auxw

Right after the machine boots cleanly?

Eric



-- 
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Eric Anderson     Sr. Systems Administrator    Centaur Technology
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
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