Re: [Pan-users] Re: freeze, high CPU getting new headers

[David Kelly]

On Aug 2, 2008, at 2:21 AM, Duncan wrote:

> David Kelly <address@hidden> posted
> address@hidden, excerpted below,  
> on  Fri,
> 01 Aug 2008 23:48:25 -0500:
> > Expect Linux has similar but FreeBSD has per-process limits on  
> > memory.
> > Default is 512MB. So unless one has a number of processes drawing  
> > 512MB
> > having 3GB doesn't do a single application much good. However the OS
> > will use the extra for disk caching.
>
> On Linux this will be set by the distribution (which on the BSDs,  
> FreeBSD
> is effectively its own distribution, so I guess it's sort of the same
> there).  The command to check and set various per-process resource  
> limits
> is "ulimit".  This is a shell built-in, at least for bash, which  
> has way
> more options than the relatively bare POSIX standard.
>
> In a bash shell, type "help ulimit" for a listing of the options.   
> There
> are "soft" limits which can be reset if necessary, and "hard" limits
> which cannot be raised except from a privileged process (root or the
> like) but may be lowered.  In particular and among others, -a  
> reports all
> current limits, -m is the maximum physical memory a program may  
> use, and
> -v is the maximum virtual memory it is allowed to use.

Yes, that is within the shell but the shell comes after the kernel.  
No matter that the shell reports ulimit as unlimited, the FreeBSD  
kernel limits what the shell can get. In FreeBSD per-user limits and  
customization is configured in /etc/login.conf, Looking at FreeBSD 7  
I find the kernel limits are set differently than in 5 when I had to  
tweak for pan. In a quick search I don't see any limit controls  
beyond those in login.conf.

Most Linux users launch Pan via bash? Not directly from KDE or Gnome  
or some other desktop? Or that their desktop environment's resources  
are set/limited/controlled from a parent shell process?

--
David Kelly N4HHE, address@hidden
========================================================================
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.