Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 17:54:13 +1000 From: Stephen McKay <syssgm@devetir.qld.gov.au> To: Jon Loeliger <jdl@jdl.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org, syssgm@devetir.qld.gov.au Subject: Re: historical note.. Message-ID: <199603130754.RAA20124@orion.devetir.qld.gov.au>
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Jon Loeliger <jdl@jdl.com> wrote:
>So, like "Jonathan M. Bresler" was saying to me just the other day:
>> Julian Elischer wrote:
>> >
>> > I just found this in the BSD4.3 kernel I'm trying to debug..
>> > it's from vmparam.h..
>>
>> HEY! somebody took this out fo the FreeBSD sources! not fair.
>>
>> i want it back. please submit a diff. ;^)
>
>I was curious too. So I fired off a piece of mail to
>our eternally good buddy Keith. With all due respect,
>I forward his private mail to me. He says:
>
> To: jdl@jdl.com
> From: Keith Bostic
> Subject: Re: Historical note...
> Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 15:58:45 EST
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> > [ You don't just happen to know who wrote this, do you? :-)
> > But, to be a '81 era comment, it's gotta be more like 4.1,
> > (or 2.9?) or earlier, right? -- jdl ]
>
> Bill Joy checked in the SCCS delta, presumably he wrote the text.
> And, yes, this comment disappeared before the 4.2 release, so it's
> not a 4.3BSD kernel.
>
> --keith
>
>Oh wow!
For contrast, here is the appropriate bit from 386BSD 0.1 in
/sys/sys.386bsd/i386/include/vmparam.h (yes, I keep some weird old cruft):
/*
* Just for fun: current memory prices are 4600$ a megabyte on VAX (4/22/81),
* so we loan each swapped in process memory worth 100$, or just admit
* that we don't consider it worthwhile and swap it out to disk which costs
* $30/mb or about $0.75.
* { wfj 6/16/89: Retail AT memory expansion $800/megabyte, loan of $17
* on disk costing $7/mb or $0.18 (in memory still 100:1 in cost!) }
*/
#define SAFERSS 8 /* nominal ``small'' resident set size
protected against replacement */
Bill got this from net/2, didn't he? Net/2 was post-4.3, true? What I'm
building to is the near-to-impossible suggestion that Keith might be wrong.
Still, that's not my main point. I find this sort of buried historical
trivia fascinating, and would love to have it re-inserted, together with
a 1996 data point. That is, of course, if we can find an appropriate bit
of code to attach it to, since SAFERSS no longer exists.
Stephen.
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