On Mon, 16 Sep 1996 13:08:14 -0400 
 jspath@mail.bcpl.lib.md.us (Webmaster Jim) wrote:

 > All this talk about paging must have made my machine jealous -- it
 > locked up this morning while FTP'ing a file (actually the file was NFS
 > mounted from another machine, and the FTP client was sending it to a
 > Novell disk).
 > 
 > What does this error message mean, and can I avoid it?
 > 
 > Sep 16 11:43:12 gimli /netbsd: mb_map full

It means that the kernel VM map that manages KVA space allocated to mbuf 
clusters has no more room in it to map pages.  Memory may be available, 
but if it can't be mapped, it can't be used.

You can increase the size of this map by compiling a kernel with the option:

options NMBCLUSTERS=<some number>

The default on most ports is 256, 512 if "options GATEWAY" is used.  I 
have mine set at 1024 on my hp380 (which is my ppp link, NFS server, and 
YP server at home)

If you're running 1.2_BETA on the system, your kernel should attempt to 
recover from this condition by draining the protocols, thus freeing 
mbufs, and reclaiming space in the mb_map.

 -- save the ancient forests - http://www.bayarea.net/~thorpej/forest/ -- 
Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center                               Home: 408.866.1912
NAS: M/S 258-6                                          Work: 415.604.0935
Moffett Field, CA 94035                                Pager: 415.428.6939