From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Jan 21 07:08:12 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id HAA19320 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 21 Jan 1996 07:08:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de [141.76.1.11]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id HAA19307 for ; Sun, 21 Jan 1996 07:08:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from sax.sax.de by irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (8.6.12/8.6.12-s1) with ESMTP id QAA07158 for ; Sun, 21 Jan 1996 16:07:56 +0100 Received: by sax.sax.de (8.6.11/8.6.12-s1) with UUCP id QAA06194 for freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org; Sun, 21 Jan 1996 16:07:55 +0100 Received: (from j@localhost) by uriah.heep.sax.de (8.7.3/8.6.9) id PAA24984 for freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org; Sun, 21 Jan 1996 15:23:01 +0100 (MET) From: J Wunsch Message-Id: <199601211423.PAA24984@uriah.heep.sax.de> Subject: Re: Leaving OS at 1.1.5.1 (was Re: BSDvs Lxxxxx Flame.. ) To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD hackers) Date: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 15:23:01 +0100 (MET) Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) In-Reply-To: <199601211252.WAA02010@ajax.che.curtin.edu.au> from "Gary Roberts" at Jan 21, 96 10:52:29 pm X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk As Gary Roberts wrote: > > J Wunsch writes: > > > No, this machine is still on 1.1.5.1. And will remain so, i think. > > May I ask why, in particular? It basically boils down to: ``Never change a running system''. The machine does its job very well (a corporate NFS server, also modem server, though not heavy-loaded), there are only two known problems (the systems suffers from a hanging sio bug every now and then, since the Tx buffer empty bit will never be set, and it might hang this early version of the ncr driver when doing tape opertions with the wrong blocksize). The usual uptimes of this machine range above 100 days. I've left the company last year, so there's now nobody who would be willing to actually do an upgrade anyways. The company is small enough to not worry being sued by USL/Novell/SCO/. :-) > Up until very recently I had never bothered `net-surfing' but when I loaded > one of the 2.1.0 SNAP's on another machine at work, I decided to run the > BSDI netscape 2.0b3 on the other machine, displaying on my external 17" > monitor. Ahh, netcrap. It's a known VM hog. You're suffering from the infamous ``swap leak''. I think there has been a workaround for it in 1.1.5.1, but it looks like it doesn't help for you. The problem has been eliminated in FreeBSD 2 by the VM gurus, so upgrading might be a real chance for you. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)