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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.eng.convex.com!newshost.convex.com!newsgate.duke.edu!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.ac.net!news1.erols.com!newsmaster@erols.com From: Ken Bigelow <kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Out of Processes Date: Fri, 05 Jul 1996 08:29:25 -0700 Organization: Erols Internet Services Lines: 67 Message-ID: <31DD34D5.591C@www.play-hookey.com> References: <31D06A89.41C67EA6@nwlink.com> <31D4048A.23C4@www.play-hookey.com> <4r8ved$85i@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: kenjb05.play-hookey.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.02 (Win16; I) kargl@troutmask.apl.washington.edu wrote: > > Ken Bigelow <kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com> wrote in article <31D4048A.23C4@www.play-hookey.com> : > > > >Florida Boy wrote: > >> > >> FreeBSD 2.1.release > >> 16 MB of physical RAM > >> 128 MB of swamp > >> 1 GB drive > >> > >> After about 32-40 processes, my machine claims "no more processes" for > >> each user. I've adjusted maxusers in the kernel conf file to 64, so I > >> thought I had circumvented this. Any suggestions or helpful hints where > >> else to look? > > > >Did you recompile the kernel after setting this parameter? > > > >Ken > > > > No. He needs to look at his per-shell process limits. > > kargl[179] limit > cputime unlimited > filesize unlimited > datasize 65536 kbytes > stacksize 8192 kbytes > coredumpsize unlimited > memoryuse 24576 kbytes > descriptors 64 > memorylocked 10193 kbytes > maxproc 100 > > The last one is the important. Oh yeash, this is under a tcsh. > I refer you to the on-line handbook, under "Rebuilding the Kernel: This file sets the size of a number of important system tables. This number is supposed to be roughly equal to the number of simultaneous users you expect to have on your machine. However, under normal circumstances, you will want to set maxusers to at least four, especially if you are using X Windows or compiling software. The reason is that the most important table set by maxusers is the maximum number of processes, which is set to 20 + 16 * maxusers, so if you set maxusers to one, then you can only have 36 simultaneous processes, including the 18 or so that the system starts up at boot time, and the 15 or so you will probably create when you start X Windows. Even a simple task like reading a man page will start up nine processes to filter, decompress, and view it. Setting maxusers to 4 will allow you to have up to 84 simultaneous processes, which should be enough for anyone. If, however, you see the dreaded ``proc table full'' error when trying to start another program, or are running a server with a large number of simultaneous users (like Walnut Creek CDROM's FTP site), you can always increase this number and rebuild. If he didn't recompile the kernel, he can set 1000 processes for each user but the system won't run them. -- Ken Are you interested in | byte-sized education | http://www.play-hookey.com over the Internet? |