Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sat, 26 May 2001 13:44:36 -0700
From:      David Greenman <dg@root.com>
To:        Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
Cc:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: panics with 4GB on an IBM xSeries 330
Message-ID:  <20010526134436.W19893@nexus.root.com>
In-Reply-To: <200105251835.LAA11814@usr05.primenet.com>; from tlambert@primenet.com on Fri, May 25, 2001 at 06:35:29PM %2B0000
References:  <200105251835.LAA11814@usr05.primenet.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>] We have a 4GB IBM xSeries 330 (1GHz PIII) and I can't get 4.3-RELEASE to
>] boot on it. I did set NKPT to 64 as suggested by DG about a week ago on
>] this list (this is also the reason I take this to -hackers rather than
>] -questions). Still, I get 
>] panic: swap_pager_swap_init: swap_zone=NULL
>] when booting (both the modified kernel and GENERIC behave the same). An
>] identical machine with 1GB works like a champ. Anything else other than
>] NKPT I should set?
>
>Personally, I think NKPT is a red herring.  I am running several
>4G machines with the default of 32, and have not had problems
>(any problems will be automatically fixed for you by grow_kernel()).

   NKPT is the initial number of kernel page table pages. It has to be large
enough so that all of the initial/bootstrap VM system data structures can be
allocated. pmap_growkernel() doesn't work during this time since the VM
system has not be initialized yet. The data structures can be quite large
and the default of NKPT isn't large enough and a panic will result in the
bootstrap prior to the device initialization. This was the problem in the
first 4G problem report a few days ago, but is apparantly not the problem
in the most recently reported problem.

-DG

David Greenman
Co-founder, The FreeBSD Project - http://www.freebsd.org
President, TeraSolutions, Inc. - http://www.terasolutions.com
Pave the road of life with opportunities.

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20010526134436.W19893>