Re: Default size limits for /run (/var/run) and /run/lock (/var/lock)

[Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk>]

On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 03:17:24PM +0000, Philipp Kern wrote:
> On 2011-04-13, David Goodenough <david.goodenough@btconnect.com> wrote:
> > I am surprised at this.  I have several boxes which are small single board
> > computers with solid state disks (MIDE or CF), so as I did not need swap 
> > space (the running set is fixed and the memory requirement was within
> > the total available memory, I did not define any swap space.  A few days
> > ago I needed to move one of the boxes I noted its uptime at 594 days just
> > before I switched it off.  I grant you that it has 256MB of memory, and 
> > 120MB is currently free, but I have not noticed any problems growing over
> > the time it was up.  Maybe it just did not need to make any large physically
> > contiguous allocations.
> 
> Given that Linux does paging, you normally don't need large physically
> contiguous allocations.  I think the exceptions are mainly I/O regions for
> DMA.

Heap allocations also have to be contiguous.  And every thread needs a
kernel stack which is at least 2 contiguous pages on most architectures.

> And you're probably not using that heavily on such a machine.
 
Evidently.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.
                                                              - Albert Camus