*BSD News Article 22394


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From: torek@horse.ee.lbl.gov (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Lack of tuning params in BSD
Date: 14 Oct 1993 15:07:46 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley CA
Lines: 61
Message-ID: <34733@dog.ee.lbl.gov>
References: <CEv0xs.HCr@candle.uucp>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.112.15

In article <CEv0xs.HCr@candle.uucp> root@candle.uucp (Bruce Momjian) writes:
>I have noticed that BSD does not have the same kernel tuning parameters
>as System V, like the max. number of processes, max number of mounted
>file systems, or max. number of open files.
>
>Does BSD dynamically allocate all of these, making tuning unnecessary?

The answer depends strongly on your particular flavor of BSD.  4.4BSD
allocates almost everything dynamically; other versions have static
tables for some or all of these.

In any case, the notion that BSD lacks tuning parameters is false.  But
there is no special tool for adjusting them, at least in versions that
predate 4.4BSD, because true BSD systems are supplied in source form.
You simply update the parameters and recompile.

---What?  Ah.  SunOS is *not* BSD; it is merely *derived from* BSD (and
less and less so with each new version).  The same goes for other
derivatives.  Vendors shipping binary-only systems are expected to
supply their own tuning methods.

Note that 4.4BSD does have a convenient way to alter many of these sorts
of `tuning variables' (without rebooting).  Some of these, of course, are
read-only (you cannot change the boot time, for instance, or write on the
load average).

	kern.ostype = 4.4BSD
	kern.osrelease = 4.4BSD
	kern.osrevision = 199306
	kern.version = 4.4BSD UNIX #60: Sun May 30 22:14:45 PDT 1993
	    torek@elf.ee.lbl.gov:/usr/src/sys/compile/LBL
	kern.maxvnodes = 490
	kern.maxproc = 276
	kern.maxfiles = 956
	kern.argmax = 20480
	kern.securelevel = 1
	kern.hostname = elf.ee.lbl.gov
	kern.hostid = 1408762104
	kern.clockrate: hz = 100, tick = 10000, profhz = 100, stathz = 100
	kern.posix1version = 198808
	kern.ngroups = 16
	kern.job_control = 1
	kern.saved_ids = 0
	kern.boottime = Sat Sep 25 15:54:47 1993

	net.inet.ip.forwarding = 0
	net.inet.ip.redirect = 1
	net.inet.ip.ttl = 64
	net.inet.icmp.maskrepl = 0
	net.inet.udp.checksum = 1

	hw.machine = sparc
	hw.model = Sun 4/65 (MB86900/1A or L64801 @ 25 MHz, WTL3170/2 FPU)
	hw.ncpu = 1
	hw.byteorder = 4321
	hw.physmem = 16711680
	hw.usermem = 14319616
	hw.pagesize = 4096
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Lawrence Berkeley Lab CSE/EE (+1 510 486 5427)
Berkeley, CA		Domain:	torek@ee.lbl.gov