[LispM-Hackers] Outageness

[Nyef]

On Sat, 23 Feb 2002, John Morrison wrote:

> Hi;

Hello.

> Nyef wrote:
> > Right now it's basically impossible to run E3 with 192MB of memory (RAM +
> > Swap). I have a little more than that, and it still chokes (funny messages
> > from the kernel VM system and everything).
>
> What OS are you using, if I may be so bold as to ask?  What is the exact
> complaint?

FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE.

The complaint is that I don't like seeing messages like:

Jan  2 09:40:04 hitomi /kernel: swap_pager: indefinite wait buffer:
device: #ad/0x20001, blkno: 61728, size: 4096

in my system log. Or the way the system takes tens of seconds to do
anything when it's spitting those kind of messages out. I suppose that
this could be a problem with the disk that the swap space is on, but e3 is
the _only_ program I've run into that triggers it (and it did so
reliably).

> Maybe that this is analogous to the problem of running CMUCL on Linux
> (which, by the way, I personally ran into) - you've got to tell the
> kernel that "hey, it's OK to 'overcommit' memory."  I think you have to
> do something heinous like echo a "1" into some /proc pseudo-file (geez,
> am I the only guy around here that feels he needs to take a shower when
> he does something like that?  Don't even get me started about trying to
> put a 160GB disk on my Linux box ... ugh).

Mmm... Makes IOCTL look clean by comparison. I don't see any sysctl
parameter for overcommit, though... Not that it would have to be called
that...

> > > > There's a pile of textified chapters of ssdn2 that aren't on unlambda.com
> > > > up at http://www.dridus.com/~nyef/lispm/ssdn2/ and now that there appears
> > > > to be a point again I may find time to do a few more soon...
> > >
> > > I'm still caught up with taking care of networking things, so I'll
> > > get to that soon, though not instantly.
> >
> > Okay, just making sure that you know that they're there.
>
> Bless you.  I shall go and try and scam, er, download them.  Thanks for
> the help!

No problem. Hopefully I can get the remaining 9 or so sections done
soon...

I don't suppose anyone has a copy of SPECIFICATION:  EXPLORER II
PROCESSOR, part number 2540834, do they? (or is that Explorer II Processor
Board Specification, part number 2540834-0001?)

> -jm

---------------------------
All programming can be viewed as an exercise.
---------------------------
Alastair Bridgewater
e-mail: nyef@softhome.net