Re: Hard-limits for kern.maxproc
Re: Hard-limits for kern.maxproc
- Subject: Re: Hard-limits for kern.maxproc
- From: Nathan <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:54:59 -0700
On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 3:41 PM, mm w <email@hidden> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Nathan <email@hidden> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 12:43 PM, mm w <email@hidden> wrote:
>>> Hi Nathan, there is or was certainly a reason for this limit,
>>> a hard limit is either more than or equal to a soft limit, as you said
>>> the soft limit can be changed through sysctl command,
>>>
>>> this value wasn't always defined as 2500, for instance, NPROC is
>>> using MAXUSERS, macosx is "by default" compiled with a "Medium scale" limit
>>> you can change it at compile time to setup a "larger scale" limit
>>> anyway these specifications are available in the UNIX03 process structure part
>>>
>>
>> 1) Where can I download the kernel so I can look through some of the
>> source myself? It's not on the list at macosforge.org.
>
> http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html
>
> must have an ADC account
>
> http://developer.apple.com/products/membership.html
You are correct, it prompted me for my ADC credentials. I've been a
member for years, and it took my login just fine. I downloaded this:
http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/tarballs/apsl/xnu-1228.9.59.tar.gz
>> 2) More description of NPROC, MAXUSERS, and "scales", and UNIX03 would
>> be helpful. I'd be happy to read up on them if someone could point me
>> in the right direction. Where should I look? The source code?
>>
>
> http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/docs/UNIX03_Certification_Guide.html
>
> and so
>
> http://www.opengroup.org/platform/lfs.html
Awesome! I'll start reading...
> "hard limit
> A system resource limitation that may be reset to a lesser or greater
> limit by a privileged process. A non-privileged process is restricted
> to only lowering its hard limit. "
Good point. I'm using the term "hard limit" incorrectly. The hard
limit is the value of kern.maxproc, which is adjustable. The limit
that I'm specifically working to raise right now is the "2500" value
that you can't raise kern.maxproc above without recompiling the
kernel. What's the term for that? Limit of the hard limit? Hard
limit ceiling? Glass ceiling? Ozone layer?
> (just for the example), you may find all what you need on the
> opengroup website, it's a bit a mess, but it's like everything when
> you will understand how to navigate, should be fine
>
>
> but anyway A hardWARE limit is a physical limit, so there is a reason
Point taken, but if my pentium-III 800Mhz linux server with 512MB RAM
could regularly handle tens of thousands of processes (most of which
weren't actually doing anything, mind you), I'm quite confident that
my 8 x C2D 2.8GHz Xserve with 16GB RAM is not the cause for OS X's
only allowing 2500 processes max. If the performance of the hardware
was the decision to set the process limit, it's high time to revisit
the issue.
>> 3) Does anyone know what buttons I could push at Apple to get (at
>> least) the server kernel compiled with "larger scale" or something
>> like that? I'd like this fix to be available to the larger community,
>> which really means getting it into an official OS update.
>
>> Where should I look? The source code?
>
> yes, change the default conf, and patch for non automated files
I'll check that out.
Thanks for all the helpful comments!
~ Nathan
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