From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Dec 4 03:12:21 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: FreeBSD-Questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F34CC106564A for ; Thu, 4 Dec 2008 03:12:21 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: from igloo.linux.gr (igloo.linux.gr [62.1.205.36]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6F3268FC1C for ; Thu, 4 Dec 2008 03:12:21 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: from kobe.laptop (adsl37-141.kln.forthnet.gr [77.49.164.141]) (authenticated bits=128) by igloo.linux.gr (8.14.3/8.14.3/Debian-5) with ESMTP id mB43C5dN001029 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NOT); Thu, 4 Dec 2008 05:12:12 +0200 Received: from kobe.laptop (kobe.laptop [127.0.0.1]) by kobe.laptop (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id mB43C5Tm042365; Thu, 4 Dec 2008 05:12:05 +0200 (EET) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: (from keramida@localhost) by kobe.laptop (8.14.3/8.14.3/Submit) id mB43C4hE042364; Thu, 4 Dec 2008 05:12:04 +0200 (EET) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) From: Giorgos Keramidas To: Kevin Monceaux References: <20081203202155.GA84629@slackbox.xs4all.nl> Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 05:12:04 +0200 In-Reply-To: (Kevin Monceaux's message of "Wed, 3 Dec 2008 17:24:48 -0600 (CST)") Message-ID: <87abbciqgr.fsf@kobe.laptop> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.60 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-MailScanner-ID: mB43C5dN001029 X-Hellug-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-Hellug-MailScanner-SpamCheck: not spam, SpamAssassin (not cached, score=-3.858, required 5, autolearn=not spam, ALL_TRUSTED -1.80, AWL 0.54, BAYES_00 -2.60) X-Hellug-MailScanner-From: keramida@ceid.upatras.gr X-Spam-Status: No Cc: FreeBSD Questions E-Mail List Subject: Re: Returning User With Filesystem/Memory Tuning Questions X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 03:12:22 -0000 On Wed, 3 Dec 2008 17:24:48 -0600 (CST), Kevin Monceaux wrote: > 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 Hi Kevin, The `kern.maxdsiz' tunable is a boot-time option that limits the amount of memory a _single_ process can allocate for its `data'. The default value is 512 MB (the value reported by sysctl is the number of bytes): $ sysctl kern.maxdsiz kern.maxdsiz: 536870912 If a single process running on i386 wants to allocate more than 512 MB of memory, and it is not a large database server, then it's possible that something is wrong with the way the process handles its memory :) For what it's worth, I've been reading newsgroups with more than 5000 messages in Gnus, a newsreader that runs inside GNU Emacs, and its memory usage has *never* reached 512 MB, so if you want help to switch from the aging tin reader to something that is still maintained & developed actively, I will be glad to help. Gnus can run in text-only mode too, much like tin; it supports threading, scoring of messages by author, subject, by custom header filters, etc.; it can read messages from multiple news servers; it can work in `offline' mode and post all your outgoing messages later, when you get back online; it can prefetch all the messages of your favorite groups, and that's just a short list of the features I can remember off-hand. > 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. Well, you can just ask here, on the freebsd-questions list. There are _many_ knowledgeable subscribers who can describe what each FreeBSD option means, how to tune it for your own needs, and so on :-)