FreeBSD/i386 6-stable + 4 GB RAM

[Atanas]

Oliver Fromme said the following on 03/14/06 08:30:
> 
> Will FreeBSD/i386 6-stable run on a 4 GB machine out of the
> box?  Do I have to apply special tuning (kernel config or
> sysctl or whatever)?  Using PAE shouldn't be necessary, I
> assume.
> 
All it depends is what size of memory address space the motherboard 
manufacturer decided to reserve for PCI devices. I've seen boards with 
PCI window size ranging from 256 to 1024MB. In order to utilize the full 
amount of RAM you would need PAE.

> It would also be interesting to know if 4-stable (which is
> currently running on the predecessor machines) would run
> without problems on those new 4 GB ones, too.
> 
For 4-STABLE you would need to adjust KVA_PAGES. Otherwise, depending on 
the load and the memory usage, you might get random crashes. Or at least 
this is what I experienced when upgrading RAM on a bunch of 4.x based 
machines.

Regards,
Atanas