Subject: Systems with small memories. [was Re: microvax 3100...]
To: None <ragge@ludd.luth.se>
From: Brian Chase <vaxzilla@jarai.org>
List: tech-kern
Date: 11/28/2002 12:13:24
On Thu, 28 Nov 2002 ragge@ludd.luth.se wrote:

> Some of the memory the kernel uses is linear to the amount of available
> ram in the machine. I did run 1.5 something on a 2MB machine; but haven't
> tried it with 1.6 (yet). This config file is the one I used.
> I don't have any 3100 available for test right now, feel free to try it.
>
> [...]
>
> maxusers        4

One of the things I discovered earlier while trying to pare down the
kernel into something leaner is that, with 1.6 at least, you can't have
a value of maxusers smaller than `8' without config informing me that it
knows better:

  # config SMALL
  SMALL:47: warning: minimum of 8 maxusers assumed

I do seem to remember being able to specify values of 4 and 2 for this
in older releases.  And certainly it'd be handy to be able to specify
/any/ postive integer value in the kernel config files.  Especially for
the ports like VAX where it's not at all unusual to have systems with
only 4MB of RAM.

I've got a small list of send-pr's to submit this weekend; the above is
one of the items I'd like to have reverted back to earlier behavior.
That is unless there's some technical reason to enforce a maxusers of 8,
I can't see why we should be artificially limited in our choices just
because someone decided it seemed like an okay assumption that no one
would ever need a lower value for maxusers.

-brian.