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- From: limes@ouroborous.Eng.Sun.COM (Greg Limes)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
- Subject: Re: Kernel Config -- Whats the deal with MAXUSERS?
- Date: 24 Jul 1992 18:44:08 GMT
- Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
- Lines: 30
- Message-ID: <l70jroINNgm3@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM>
- References: <1992Jul22.143012.28974@ugle.unit.no> <mjr.711911236@uther> <14n2ffINNog@early-bird.think.com>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: ouroborous
-
- In article <mjr.711911236@uther> mjr@uther.calvin.edu (Matt Ranney) writes:
- | This chart has puzzled me ever since we got our 4/670. Why does
- | MAXUSERS have to be lower if you have more memory available?
-
- In article <14n2ffINNog@early-bird.think.com> barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
- | The size of some kernel tables related to memory management are
- | proportional to the amount of memory you have. There are probably some
- | per-process data structures that have this property, so the number of
- | processes goes down as the total memory goes up.
-
- We Apologise for the Inconvenience.
-
- Details for the curious:
-
- As memory goes up, we allocate more tables for the SRMMU, along with
- the normal SunOS bookkeeping. Raising MAXUSERS expands *lots* of tables,
- most notibly expanding the "segu" portion of kernel virtual space, which
- gets five virtual pages per process.
-
- Also, the limit on how much kernel virtual space is available is
- smaller on the Sun-4M boxes, as we have carved some hunks out of
- the kernel space.
-
- Oh, I wouldn't advise going over the limits in the table; at
- some levels, the symptoms are both ugly *and* delayed.
-
- Fixed in 4.1.3, we lowered the base of the kernel, giving more
- overall kernel virtual space. I've been running "maxusers 225"
- kernels on the machine in the lab with a gigabyte of memory, and
- there is no table space shortage.
-