[9fans] Ghost in the linker?

[Eric Dorman edorman@Tanya.ucsd.edu]

forsyth wrote:
> 
> >>8l gets to 40Mb during the link!
> 
> that part is normal with ghostscript, as i recall.
> i had to relink the old version and i'm fairly sure i
> needed to do it on a 64mb cpu server.

I've compiled gs3.33 in 32mb on a pcdisk and it
pages pretty heavily.  Compiling parts of libtiff
also page on my old 32mb config.

I've been wondering what the 'typical' installation 
does (err, should do?) in cases where the cpuserver 
starts to page heavily.  It seems to me that w/o a 
paging disk on the cpuserver (or terminals paging 
heavily) there'll be an inordinate amount of traffic 
on the network.  Separate networks for cpu<>fs 
activity could help but are annoying to manage.

I think one could just put gobs of memory in the 
cpu and 'plenty' in the terminals and just take 
the hit in the rare occasion memory runs out... it's 
mostly pretty cheap these days, particularly compared 
to cheap disks that provide really too much storage 
for this task (plus hassle of having to maintain them).  
Paging doesn't happen often, either.

OTOH I don't really know what the paging statistics
look like for a cpuserver with a large user base; maybe 
a paging disk on the cpuserver is a win?  (then again,
what is 'large'?  50?  1000? ).

Eric Dorman
edorman@tanya.ucsd.edu