From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Mar 27 17:51: 7 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from dt051n0b.san.rr.com (dt051n0b.san.rr.com [204.210.32.11]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B007437BC9E for ; Mon, 27 Mar 2000 17:51:04 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from Doug@gorean.org) Received: from slave (doug@slave [10.0.0.1]) by dt051n0b.san.rr.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA29579; Mon, 27 Mar 2000 17:51:02 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from Doug@gorean.org) Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 17:51:02 -0800 (PST) From: Doug Barton X-Sender: doug@dt051n0b.san.rr.com To: Jeremiah Gowdy Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Transmit Buffer In-Reply-To: <000d01bf984c$5058da40$0100000a@vista1.sdca.home.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Mon, 27 Mar 2000, Jeremiah Gowdy wrote: > Question: I keep getting transmit buffer messages on my FreeBSD box which I > am using to run an Unreal Tournament server. Every time it gives me such a > message it says it's made an adjustment to the buffer size. The messages > are very infrequent now, almost nonexistant, which leads me to believe > FreeBSD has adjusted it's behavior/settings to match the type of load on my > server (which I think is _very_ cool). However, I'm just wondering if I can > set these settings manually in order to test settings. Depending on what kind of NIC you are using, and what exact error messages you're referring to, I believe you are correct, that the system has "tuned itself" so to speak to fit your usage patterns. > There's one thing I like about Windows which I haven't yet learned how to do > with FreeBSD. In Windows, I can customize my box to use certain resources > for certain things. For example, if I want to use 32 or 64 megs of memory > for a disk cache, I can do that. The reason you want/need to do that is because windows is way too dumb to get the balance right itself. Been there, done that. > The point is, I know what type of load my machine is going to have, > and how much resources it has, and I want to be able to decide how much of X > resource is used for Y task. You need to get out of the windows mindset. :) Before you decide that you know better than the system how to allocate resources, do some serious analysis on what the real usage patterns are (not what you think they are) and how the system is actually allocating resources. For instance, FreeBSD will continue to allocate disk cache as long as there is free memory available, and it starts to swap unused bits of system (and other) code out when it starts to run out of free memory. Effective disk caching is the _last_ thing you need to worry about on a FreeBSD system. "But I want to control it anyway!" Ok, knock yourself out. The knobs are there, tweak to your heart's content. But don't expect people to "help" you do it, since the effort has already gone into the system to make it the best it can be, and the developers have other things to keep them busy. :) Good luck, Doug -- "So, the cows were part of a dream that dreamed itself into existence? Is that possible?" asked the student incredulously. The master simply replied, "Mu." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message