Still necessary to recompile kernel to change KVA_PAGES for systems with 4GB+ RAM

[ProtoSD]

Just curious if it was still necessary to recompile the kernel to change KVA_PAGES and/or edit loader.conf and tweaking vm.kmem_size=

I'm assuming since I saw minimum requirements for 8.x were 6GB of RAM the answer is no, but I'd feel better if the answer was clear.

Thanks!

 

[Tekkie]

Take the AMD64 version ;) and you don't need to think about it anymore.

PS. The 32bit i.e. i386 version can only do 4GB RAM anyway. ;)

 

[ProtoSD]

Even with an Intel CPU? Why do they label it AMD, and why say minimum RAM is 6GB if i386 version won't support it? Seems really counter intuitive. If what you say is correct, they need to update the descriptions.

 

[Tekkie]

The AMD64 description stems from the fact that AMD was first to introduce 64bit extensions to the 'old' x86 architecture, remember INTeL Itanium? That was supposed to be the future CPU architecture we all were going to use before AMD came along with its 64bit extension to x86, time will tell if it was the right choice or if AMD made life hell for us.

As for i386 (e.g. 32bit) limits of 4GB RAM address space are well known and documented the net over. ;)

Like for most software the documentation can always be improved, but hell who reads it anyway right? :) http://www.freenas.org/category/version-comparison actually tells you that 4GB is the minimum (for a UFS install), but for a ZFS install 6GB is the minimum, which implies 64bit.

 

[dmt0]

Resurrecting this ancient thread.

Tekkie, would there be any downside to having the officially distributed i386 version built with KVA_PAGES=512? Why is it not built like that now?

 

[jgreco]

My guess would be because it places some additional stresses on small i386 systems that *don't* use ZFS, and possibly because the FreeNAS developers are fairly fixated on ZFS and amd64, AFAICT.