Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 11:59:50 -0600 From: Mike Meyer <mwm-dated-1048960792.251d4a@mired.org> To: The Anarcat <anarcat@anarcat.ath.cx> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: crashdumping on massive amounts of RAM Message-ID: <15999.18326.297880.599596@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <20030324174332.GB831@lenny.anarcat.ath.cx> References: <20030324174332.GB831@lenny.anarcat.ath.cx>
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In <20030324174332.GB831@lenny.anarcat.ath.cx>, The Anarcat <anarcat@anarcat.ath.cx> typed: > I am fortunate enough to have a box with a lot (by my standards) of > RAM: > > real memory = 1207877632 (1151 MB) > avail memory = 1166782464 (1112 MB) > > Now the problem I have is I'd like to debug the panic()s I'm seeing > now and then on this box, since I'm running 5.0. :) But it seems I > need at least as much swap as I need RAM to do this. > > So I just want to make sure there is no other way to crashdump this > RAM than making a gigantic 1GB swap area. The worst is that I really > don't need 1GB of *swap*!! 1GB of RAM is fine. All processes run in > main memory, but 1GB of swap? That would *suck*. ;) I have 250MB right > now and I already think it's too much. > > Any brilliant ideas to work around this? Yes - enable the kernel debugging option (DDB) on the kernel, and debug the running system when it panics. As for your swap partition - the same thing happens when you run out of virtual memory either way: processes start dieing. Having a little swap lets you get a warning of that because you'll start paging things out which would otherwise live in memory. Unless you're planning on setting up a warning system that watches for paging activity and notifies you so you can do something about it, there's probably not much point in having 250MB of swap on a system with a gigabyte of ram. In your shoes, I'd seriously consider running without swap. On the other hand, disk space is so cheap that I always have lots of swap. Something about the days when I used to recompile LISP systems on memory-starved machines.... <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/consulting.html Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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