The documentation on changing shared memory kernel settings on xBSD
(namely FreeBSD, possibly others as well) isn't ideal, IMHO. It says:

%%
     The options SYSVSHM and SYSVSEM need to be enabled when the
     kernel is compiled. (They are by default.) The maximum size of
     shared memory is determined by the option SHMMAXPGS (in
     pages). The following shows an example of how to set the various
     parameters:

options         SYSVSHM
options         SHMMAXPGS=4096
options         SHMSEG=256

options         SYSVSEM
options         SEMMNI=256
options         SEMMNS=512
options         SEMMNU=256
options         SEMMAP=256

    (On NetBSD and OpenBSD the key word is actually option singular.)

    You may also want to use the sysctl setting to lock shared memory
    into RAM and prevent it from being paged out to swap.
%%

However, it appears that shared memory & semaphore settings can also
be controlled via sysctls -- at least on a FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE box, I
can see:

kern.ipc.semmap: 30
kern.ipc.semmni: 10
kern.ipc.semmns: 60
kern.ipc.semmnu: 30
kern.ipc.semmsl: 60
kern.ipc.semopm: 100
kern.ipc.semume: 10
kern.ipc.semusz: 92
kern.ipc.semvmx: 32767
kern.ipc.semaem: 16384
kern.ipc.shmmax: 33554432
kern.ipc.shmmin: 1
kern.ipc.shmmni: 192
kern.ipc.shmseg: 128
kern.ipc.shmall: 8192
kern.ipc.shm_use_phys: 0

However, the FreeBSD box I'm playing with isn't mine, so I'm not too
keen to change sysctls (well, that and I don't have root :-) ). Would
a kind BSD user confirm that:

        (a) the sysctls above *can* be used to change kernel shared
            memory settings, and the default value of the sysctl is
            the kernel option referred to in the docs.

        (b) do the above sysctls work on NetBSD and OpenBSD as well?

        (c) the 'prevent shared memory paging' sysctl vaguely referred
            to in the docs is 'kern.ipc.shm_use_phys', right?

        (d) does the above sysctl also work on NetBSD and OpenBSD?

Thanks in advance,

Neil

-- 
Neil Conway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> || PGP Key ID: DB3C29FC


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