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Date:      Wed, 29 Mar 2006 17:54:42 +0000 (GMT)
From:      Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Dag-Erling =?iso-8859-1?Q?Sm=F8rgrav?= <des@des.no>
Cc:        Chris <chrcoluk@gmail.com>, "Conrad J. Sabatier" <conrads@cox.net>, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, bmilekic@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: nmbclusters
Message-ID:  <20060329175256.W19236@fledge.watson.org>
In-Reply-To: <861wwlcsnj.fsf@xps.des.no>
References:  <3aaaa3a0603281134sd0d4e16x@mail.gmail.com> <20060329030459.40be9cb2.conrads@cox.net> <861wwlcsnj.fsf@xps.des.no>

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On Wed, 29 Mar 2006, Dag-Erling Sm=F8rgrav wrote:

> "Conrad J. Sabatier" <conrads@cox.net> writes:
>> Chris <chrcoluk@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> so [kern.ipc.nmbclusters] has no affect, has this become a read only
>>> tunable again only settable in loader.conf?
>> To the best of my knowledge, this has *always* been a loader tunable,
>> not configurable on-the-fly.
>
> kern.ipc.nmbclusters is normally computed at boot time.  A compile- time=
=20
> option to override it was introduced in 2.0-CURRENT.  At that time, it wa=
s=20
> defined in param.c.  A read-only sysctl was introduced in 3.0-CURRENT.  I=
t=20
> moved from param.c to uipc_mbuf.c in 4.0-CURRENT, then to subr_mbuf.c whe=
n=20
> mballoc was introduced in 5.0-CURRENT; became a tunable at some point aft=
er=20
> that; then moved again to kern_mbuf.c when mballoc was replaced with mbum=
a=20
> in 6.0-CURRENT.  That is the point where it became read-write, for no goo=
d=20
> reason that I can see; setting it at runtime has no effect, because the s=
ize=20
> of the mbuf zone is determined at boot time.  Perhaps Bosko (who wrote bo=
th=20
> mballoc and mbuma, IIRC) knows.

Paul Saab from Yahoo! has a set of patches that allow run-time nmbclusters=
=20
changes to be implemented -- while it won't cause the freeing of clusters=
=20
referenced, it goes through and recalculates dependent variables, propagate=
s=20
them into UMA, etc.  I believe they're running with this patch on 6.x, and =
I=20
expect that they will be merged to -CURRENT and -STABLE in the relatively n=
ear=20
future.  Not before 6.1, however.

If the nmbclusters setting really has no effect right now, we should mark t=
he=20
sysctl as read-only to make it more clear it doesn't, since allowing it to =
be=20
set without taking effect is counter-intuitive.

Robert N M Watson
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