On Mon, 08 Jul 1996 23:22:32 -0400 
 Chris G Demetriou <Chris_G_Demetriou@ux2.sp.cs.cmu.edu> wrote:

> 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.
> 

I'd like to comment on this. I've worked for 2 ISP's that use NetBSD
in a production environment. Whilst I've never seen 2, 1 is a major pain.
although with a well timed reboot its managable. I use NetBSD
to serve Web pages, domain names and more, and I use it as a personal
workstation for myself and others. It isn't perfect, but it sure
beats SunOS and Solaris. The only good things with the latter 2 is that
driver support is usually more forecoming. Although if you want 
a driver for anything, you will usually find that if you supply the 
kit, the driver will be done.

Neil.
--
Neil J. McRae. Alive and Kicking.       Domino: In the glow of the night.
neil@DOMINO.ORG        NetBSD/sparc: 100% SpF (Solaris protection Factor) 
  Free the daemon in your computer!