mdconfig unable to allocate memory

[Colin Percival]

At 14:17 27/02/2004, Chris Elsworth wrote:
> >   The fact that running out of kernel address space can cause
> > problems is quite well documented.
>
>Well, yes, but why would "vinum start" on a clean boot before any
>tweaking (this is an out of the box 5.2.1-R) cause that? Surely the
>kernel address space is sufficiently large just by self-tuning on a
>machine with 4GB, for a vinum start to succeed?

   Sorry, I misread the order of events.  Vinum is somewhat broken
right now, but it shouldn't be that bad.

>I think I'm just missing the point of having a swap backed memory
>disk, really; I assumed that it would immediately start dumping
>anything I put in it, into swap, causing disk access. Does it only put
>stuff into swap once it runs out of address space?

   I believe that swap-backed memory disks are treated the same way
as other pageable allocations: Kept in memory until / unless the
amount of free memory drops below a given watermark.

Colin Percival