Re: crazy resource requirements for thunderbird?

[Mike Pumford <mpumford%mudcovered.org.uk@localhost>]

On 20/05/2025 12:12, PHO wrote:

> I also have this in my mk.conf, otherwise it allocates too much RAM and 
> swaps pages out while building :(
I think it might be the link stage. I don't do it any more but I used to 
build i386 packages in a chroot on amd64 and thunderbird always failed 
at the link stage after the linker ran out of memory (hitting the i386 
4GB RAM limit). Firefox never had the same problem.

Although I don't have a need for i386 packages these days the build 
environment is still around so I could do test builds if its helpful.

I have the following in /etc/sysctl.conf on my build machine:
vm.filemax=10
vm.filemin=1

While the compiles are still memory hogs these settings seem to make it 
victimise the file cache before swapping out process memory. I know that 
without them I'd regularly have jenkins (which I used to schedule my 
builds) get swapped out so much that it would stop responding on my 16GB 
RAM equipped builder. The system now has 32GB and while it swaps a 
little it can sustain both builds and an X11 desktop with things like 
firefox and thunderbird actively running with no loss of responsiveness.

Mike