Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1999 11:52:41 -0800 From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> To: Sheldon Hearn <sheldonh@iafrica.com> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Proposal: Define MAXMEM in GENERIC Message-ID: <199903141952.LAA08097@dingo.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 14 Mar 1999 18:21:38 %2B0200." <35437.921428498@axl.noc.iafrica.com>
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> > Hi folks, > > The originator of PR i386/9755 (which related to a 3.0-RELEASE install > failure) has made a valid point. > > We know that some people with >64MB RAM are going to have trouble with > the speculative memory probe while installing FreeBSD with the GENERIC > (here read any release) kernel. So why don't we add to GENERIC the > following line? > > options "MAXMEM=(64*1024)" > > The major argument that comes to mind immediately is that people are > going to end up running sub-optimal servers out-of-the-box. However, the > change is supported by the following mindset: > > Gain: > Make things easier for people with broken hardware. > > Cost: > Annoy the people who have large memory configurations and who > don't build custom kernels. > > I'm of the opinion that we're talking about a number of annoyed people > so small that the gain is justified. We'd probably be better off using VM86 and the BIOS memory probe code, which will give us the best of both worlds. The code's been in the system for a long time now, and completely obsoletes the (bogus from day 1) speculative probe. -- \\ Sometimes you're ahead, \\ Mike Smith \\ sometimes you're behind. \\ mike@smith.net.au \\ The race is long, and in the \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ end it's only with yourself. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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