Subject: Re: NetBSD stable on sun4m SS4?
To: Chris Ochs <chris@valleynet.net>
From: Chris G Demetriou <Chris_G_Demetriou@ux2.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
List: port-sparc
Date: 07/08/1996 23:22:32
> I would be very curious as to some opinions on whether the sparc port is
> generally considered to be stable enough to be run in a commercial
> environment on an SS4.
While I can't speak to the question of whether NetBSD is stable on an
SS4, i'd think carefully about your stability requirements before
deciding about NetBSD, in general.
In particular, NetBSD has ... a couple of serious, annoying problems
which may cause problems for you depending on your environment. In
that class, I include:
(1) the "paged shadow objects not pruned until parent exit"
problem that people seem to like to call a "swap leak"
even though it technically isn't,
(2) the fact that if you allocate and touch (RAM+swap) bytes
of memory, the system will hang.
If you know and understand the load of your system, NetBSD may very
well be a good choice for you. If the load on your system is
unpredictable (e.g. users, potentially running programs which could
trigger (2) above), then you might think twice about it.
chris