Has anyone noticed anything strange with options BUFCACHE lately on
   sparc (or even ever, as this is my first install)? Shouldn't
   
   options         BUFCACHE=14
   
   imply something else than:
   
   total memory = 48980 KB
   avail memory = 45580 KB
   using 128 buffers containing 512 KB of memory
   
   My fault or someone else's fault?

it is the sparc port's fault.


due to several issues, the sparc port is by default limited to what
you see above.  you can work around this by editing the sparc
machdep.c to change the code that limits these values, and also
decreasing MAXBSIZE so that kernel memory is not overused.  i
personally use these values:

	options         MAXBSIZE=16384
	options         NBUF=2048
	options         BUFPAGES=4096

and do not set BUFCACHE (though this is easier).  the BUFPAGES
value gets clipped at 3072 for some reason i haven't yet worked out
(it doesn't bother me much, from what i can see from 'systat buf'):

	total memory = 65348 KB
	avail memory = 49068 KB
	using 2048 buffers containing 12288 KB of memory

and in machdep.c:mdallocsys(), i have this change:

-       if (CPU_ISSUN4C && bufpages > (128 * (65536/MAXBSIZE)))
-               bufpages = (128 * (65536/MAXBSIZE));
+       if (CPU_ISSUN4C && bufpages > ((6*128) * (65536/MAXBSIZE)))
+               bufpages = ((6*128) * (65536/MAXBSIZE));

(which, looking at it, is the cause of the 3072 buffer limit i see :-)