From owner-freebsd-arch Fri Dec 7 11:57:43 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from beastie.mckusick.com (tserver.conference.usenix.org [209.179.127.3]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DCF6137B416; Fri, 7 Dec 2001 11:57:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from beastie.mckusick.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by beastie.mckusick.com (8.11.4/8.9.3) with ESMTP id fB7Jvef29774; Fri, 7 Dec 2001 11:57:41 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mckusick@beastie.mckusick.com) Message-Id: <200112071957.fB7Jvef29774@beastie.mckusick.com> To: Robert Watson Subject: Re: Default value for maxusers Cc: arch@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 07 Dec 2001 13:53:11 EST." Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2001 11:57:40 -0800 From: Kirk McKusick Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I believe that we should do what BSD/OS did years ago. They default maxusers to 0 which tells the system to size it at boot time based on the amount of memory available on the system. Small memory machines end up with a small value of maxusers and large memory machines ends up with a large value of maxusers. In the rare case where the default is wrong, the system administrator can set it to some non-zero value which the kernel then uses. We created maxusers so there would be one big knob that can be used to set the many internal values needed by the system. It will never be perfect, and where changes are needed (more mbufs for example), the system administrator can adjust the individual knobs as needed. But we should still have the big knob. As for the name, it is not ideal, but no other clearly better ones come to mind, and maxusers is a well known name by the legions of folks that actually have to set up BSD systems. So, absent a compelling new name, I vote to keep the name that people know. Kirk McKusick To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message