Returning User With Filesystem/Memory Tuning Questions

[Kevin Monceaux]

On Wed, 3 Dec 2008, Roland Smith wrote:

> Application crashed can also be due to bad hardware, especially memory. 
> Make sure that you rule out hardware troubles before diving into the 
> software.

I don't think it was hardware related, but it's a possibility.

Jogging my memory a bit more I think the first program I had memory 
allocation problems was tin.  Fetching headers from even a semi-large 
newsgroup would cause tin to crash.  I forget the exact error messages but 
they were something along the lines of not being able to allocate the 
needed amount of memory.  At the times of the failures there appeared to 
be available RAM with swap space completely untouched.  The errors 
occurred at about the same point in fetching the headers each time. 
After much Googling I tried adjusting the following:

kern.maxdsiz
kern.dfldsiz
kern.maxssiz

which greatly improved things.  But, I adjusted them using examples of 
values I found on the net without really understanding what I was doing. 
This time around I want to learn how to tweak whatever settings need to be 
tweaked to best use my available memory.  Are the above settings what I 
should be adjusting and/or are there others?  I know it's probably 
impossible to give advice on exactly what to tune without knowing the 
exact errors I was seeing.  But some general memory tuning advice might 
help until I'm able to reinstall and try things out.


P.S.  I've switched from tin to pan which seems to be much less of a 
memory hog, so that helps quite a bit.





Kevin
http://www.RawFedDogs.net
http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org
Bruceville, TX

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla!!!