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FreeBSD Looking for People with Lots of RAM

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the not-just-for-ram-drives-anymore dept.

drdink writes "A few weeks ago, PAE (Physical Address Extension) support was added to FreeBSD 5-CURRENT. This allows memory above 4GB to be used normally by the kernel and userland on the x86 platform. Jake Burkholder, the man behind PAE, is now looking for users to help him test this new feature. In his message to the freebsd-current mailing list, Jake describes the current caveats to PAE and also says 'We'd like this feature to be solid for 5.1-RELEASE, so I'm hoping there are people out there with systems with more than 4G of ram that are willing to test it.' This, along with other features make FreeBSD 5-STABLE look very promising."

15 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. DiY - a six step model for success. by Sonicboom · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hrm.

    1) Go to pricewatch or e-bay and buy a server that can hold greater than or equal to 4gb... and buy the RAM while you're at it.
    2) While waiting to ship - download the .iso's or whatever you'll need to prepare to install your OS.
    3) Server and RAM arrive! Snap RAM into server - take existing machine, put aside - plug KVM into new server - fire up - install OS.
    4) Test!
    5) ?????
    6) Profit!

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    [Connection closed by foreign host]
  2. Re:64 + 128 + 256 + 16 + 224 + 64 + 512k.... by bsharitt · · Score: 1, Funny

    I've got 8 gigs of RAM in my old 286 running a hacked version of FreeDOS, so this isn't really news

  3. Re:64 + 128 + 256 + 16 + 224 + 64 + 512k.... by AgentPhunk · · Score: 5, Funny
    I've got 8 gigs of RAM in my old 286 running a hacked version of FreeDOS, so this isn't really news

    Umm, that'd be 8 MEGs you got in there, Sparky.

    I'll bet it has a 5.25 TB floppy drive, and a 20" LCD green-screen monitor.

  4. This just in... by Znonymous+Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    From the office of Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (aka Baghdad Bob):

    "BSD isn't dead! The infidel Linux coaliation will soon pay the price for descriating BSD!"

    More at 11.

    --

    Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.

  5. Re:Wow! by Anonymous+Struct · · Score: 5, Funny

    Jesus... I could even put the swap space ON THE RAMDISK! Think about how fast that'd be!

  6. Re:Sweet! by lpontiac · · Score: 4, Funny
    is support for more than 4GB of memory a first for 32-bit x86 operating systems?

    No. The Linux 2.4.x kernel has it [com.com], and Unixware 7.1.3 has it [sco.com]

    So the Linux kernel's support was obviously stolen from SCO, and therefore doesn't count.

  7. Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just load up a Java application... Voila!

  8. Jesus Tap-dancing Christ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Talk about a fucking bloated OS!? 4 gigs of RAM? Not even XP Pro requires that much memory!

  9. Re:Wow! by Anonymous+Struct · · Score: 5, Funny

    I guess I need to work on my delivery... :)

  10. Re:Uh... by quinto2000 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Thank you, thank you for not saying viola!

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    Ceci n'est pas un post
  11. What happens if you have 6 Gigabytes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Looking at a full rack of DELL PowerEdge 2650s Dual Proc 2.8Ghz w/ 6 gigs of Ram and smiling. But they are already running Windows 2003 Enterprise Server. I wonder if the boss will let me take one of these $10,000 babies offline...YEA I WISH!

  12. Re:Wow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    I could even put the swap space ON THE RAMDISK!

    Great idea, but take it one step farther! Use RAID5 ramdisks to increase the speed of the swap area!

  13. Re:Wow! by Sabalon · · Score: 2, Funny

    I went to a MS presentation when Win3.1 came out YEARS ago. In discussing the memory and swap abilities of 3.1, the rep actually said that you should not use RAM drvies for swap. He said you'd be surprised how many people actually did it.

    Ah...the good ole days when MS wasn't completly evil.

  14. Re:My current setup (12GB RAM) by FyRE666 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I presume you're one of the Doom 3 beta testers then?

    --
    Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
  15. Re:Volunteer... by nathanh · · Score: 2, Funny
    I have an HP LXR 8500 with four processors (currently) and 4GB of ram. I've been considering upgrading to 6GB for a while anyway. I'm currently using Windows 2000 advanced server on it, after being somewhat frustrated with Linux support a couple of years ago. I'd be more than willing to try out BSD, although I never have before. Is there anything I should know about this? I presume that BSD would run Mathematica fine under Linux emulation mode, as my main use of the box is just Mathematica crunching. Does FreeBSD make reasonable use of four processors? Anything else I should beware of? And anyone know a good source for cheap lxr-ready ram?

    Let me translate what you wrote for all the non-cynics out there.

    Hi, I have a functional system that meets all my needs, but obviously I'm not working hard enough because I have the time to blow it away and futz with alpha-quality software. I tried Linux several years ago - I think it was Slackware 1.0 - but I was unhappy with the support though admittedly I didn't pay for a support contract. Of course, I'm assuming that Linux support hasn't improved at all the past several years. I heard something about IBM but I think that was just a rumor. So now I'm willing to try FreeBSD because that will have better support than Linux, right? Also the software I use isn't supported by FreeBSD I'm going to do it in emulation but I believe this will increase my chances of support! Also my machine has 4 CPUs and I know that FreeBSD SMP support is immature, but I still think I'll get great performance from an emulated Linux ABI running on an alpha-quality OS release with immature SMP support.

    You're a student, right? Or perhaps you do a brilliant parody of BSD bigots.