From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Feb 20 12:09:19 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8035C16A40B; Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:09:19 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from petefrench@ticketswitch.com) Received: from angel.ticketswitch.com (angel.ticketswitch.com [IPv6:2002:57e0:1d4e::1]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3D64513C442; Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:09:19 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from petefrench@ticketswitch.com) Received: from [10.50.50.2] (helo=smaug.rattatosk) by angel.ticketswitch.com with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.68 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1JRnlF-000LWc-Iw; Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:09:17 +0000 Received: from dilbert.rattatosk ([10.50.50.6] helo=dilbert.ticketswitch.com) by smaug.rattatosk with esmtp (Exim 4.68 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1JRnlF-0006xP-Gx; Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:09:17 +0000 Received: from petefrench by dilbert.ticketswitch.com with local (Exim 4.69 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1JRnlF-0009RV-GR; Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:09:17 +0000 To: alfred@freebsd.org, kkutzko@teksavvy.com In-Reply-To: <20080220035752.GR99258@elvis.mu.org> Message-Id: From: Pete French Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:09:17 +0000 Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Dual Core Xeon / i386 install w/ more than 4gb of RAM X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:09:19 -0000 > Does anyone have any alternative solutions that would provide a more > reliable environment other than PAE? I was faced with a similar problem last autmumn - we had been running 6.2 on a set of servers with 4 gig or RAM, but purchased new servers with 16 gig in them. I experimented with various things - PAE being my initial try, and ended up opting for 7.0 (prerelease) usin amd64. It worked like a charm. Note that I only shifted the OS to amd64 - I still ran my application code as the existing 6.2/i386 binaries. Didn't want to make a drastic shift in the application at the same time. It all ran fine - but our application is staticly linked, so that did make things simpler. Since then I;ve migrated almost everything we have over to amd64 and 7.0 and we are very happy with it - the only machines that havent been moved are those which cannot run in 64 bit mode (two desktops and two older servers). So, I would recommend going with amd64 if you can. -pete.