Hi Campbell, I only know (a little) about the 2.6 kernel, never heard of LIDS.. haven't seen what you describe. As I understand it, the patch to avoid using highmem for 2.6.n kernels fiddles with the split between kernel and user space, I think splitting it 2-2 gig instead of 1-3. This can have odd effects like configuring VMWare which asks "what have we here ?". Personally I don't think it's worth the hassle. As you can tell, I'm no tech expert, I just needed a reliable system for editing large files of Buddhist audio talks. I'm running 2.6.10rc2 kernel with Andrew Morton's multimedia gofast patches, and Team Barry's patches which fix what the mm patches broke in nVidia and includes the no-himem patch. Result is a multipurpose system that handles multimedia editing, games and business (sometimes all at once). cheers Rod
On Sun, 2004-12-19 at 15:31 +1100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Hi Rod, > > > The old limit stuff, and stuff about swap not being more than 2 x ram is > > out of date. You can now have virtually limitless swap space with no > > problems. > > If you have 2 fairly fast disks, best is to put half your swap space on > > each disk and define them in /etc/fstab as "parallel" i.e. with the same > > priority. This will allow them to be used simultaneously, thus doubling > > the speed. It worked great for me using 2 Sata disks with /etc/fstab as > > follows :- > > > > /dev/hda5 none swap sw,pri=3 0 0 > > /dev/hdc5 none swap sw,pri=3 0 0 > > > > Note - there is still a technical problem with physical ram - to use > > more than 896 meg ram you need "hi-mem" turned on in the kernel, which > > causes a small performance degradation. There is a kernel patch (with > > its own problem) round this if you're interested. > > Rod > > Interesting - we have noticed that this machine has problems with a > major degradation in performance after it has been running for a while. > Processes will just start using huge amounts of CPU and the load goes > through the roof. This was on a 2.4.26 LIDS-patched kernel. We tried > both selecting and deselecting 'CONFIG_HIGHIO' (I/O to high memory > pages), and the same thing happens. The help file says: > > If you want to be able to do I/O to high memory pages, say Y. > Otherwise low memory pages are used as bounce buffers causing a > degrade in performance. > > But when we roll back to a non-LIDS, 2.4.25 kernel with no > 'CONFIG_HIGHIO', it does not have the same problem. I guess it either > LIDS or some change from 2.4.25 to 2.4.26. I am going to try a newer > version of LIDS and a later kernel (the LIDS maintainers are unaware of > any issues). This happens on a dual PIII machine which has 2GB of memory > too, although less frequently as it doesn't get worked as hard. > > What was the problem with the kernel patch? > > > Cheers for your thoughts, > > Campbell > > > > > > On Sun, 2004-12-19 at 13:31 +1100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > > > I have read in various places that there is a swap space limit of 2GB on > > > x86 (ia32) machines. Is this still the case? What happens if you define > > > a swap space larger than 2GB? Will it just not address it? I have set > > > 4GB as the swap for a machine that has 2GB of physical memory (dual > > > Opteron running Debian Woody 3.0, 2.4.26 kernel, 32-bit), and it shows > > > all 4GB of swap. I am moving the OS to a new set of disks and have a > > > chance to re-define swap, so should I go for 2 x 2GB swap partitions > > > (they're on the same spindle anyway), or should I just use 4GB, or would > > > 2GB suffice? I have not been able to find much on the partitionong > > > guides on the Net or in books that gives a strong indication or is up to > > > date. > > > > > > Cheers for your pointers. > > > > > > Campbell > > -- > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel > > > -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
