Re: --largemem | --smallmem

[bruce@pixar.com (Bruce Perens)]

[What do the dpkg --smallmem and --largemem flags do?]

On a 4MB system, dpkg's in-RAM database is larger than your physical
RAM.  Thus, you use virtual memory for much of this database.
Unfortunately, dpkg has poor locality-of-reference when accessing
this database, so most of its execution time on a 4MB system is spent
in handling VM page faults.

--smallmem makes the working set smaller, and thus makes dpkg run faster
on low-memory systems. --largemem lets it use a large working set, which
runs faster on systems with more memory.

The behavior of the program other than its execution time should be
unchanged.

	Thanks

	Bruce