>> why don't we just make fsck check and adjust these limits for itself?
>> can't we "assume" that it knows what it's doing?  granted, perhaps
>> they are a little low for some things, but since anything can modify
>> them if need be, why are shells the only things that do (more or less)?
>
>What are "the right limits" for all architectures, that it should be
>setting?

we don't know, but that's not the problem.

>You can't reasonably build that kind of information into fsck; code,
>data, and stack usage are going to be different from architecture to
>architecture.  additionally, some limits (e.g. maximum stack limit)
>_cannot_ be increased for the currently-running process, because of
>the way the system is implemented.

who was suggesting that?  look.  if fsck is running with the -p option,
i think it's safe to bet that it's being run from /etc/rc and just about
nothing else is running.  it can, therefore, afford to be a little bit
loose with its own limits.  it's not going to spawn any children, so
anything it does, won't affect anything else.  will it?  teach it to try
bto malloc the memory it needs, and if the malloc fails, to try to adjust
it's limit accordingly.  the amount it would need to raise it would be
determined from how much it needs, and what it's currently limited to.
nothing architecture dependent here...is there?

>In other words:
>
>(1) it's not practical, and indeed makes no sense, to include
>information like this in programs like fsck, and

no system specific information would need to be there included...

>(2) depending on what limits need to be changed, those changes may not
>be possible in all cases.

such as?

>NetBSD should easily support all 'standard' programs in all 'expected'
>configurations.  Doing anything else is a very bad idea, and reflects
>very badly on the OS.

so...either a) using ccd's is bad since we can't fsck them on bootup, or
b) using fsck is bad because it can't fsck all filesystems you might be
using?  the behavior of fsck seems bad in this instance.  and ccd's are
standard, are they not?

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