FreeBSD ate my RAM

(crocidb.com)

64 points | by theanonymousone 3 hours ago

10 comments

  • efxhoy 0 minutes ago
    Great job on getting the fixes merged!
  • tiffanyh 47 minutes ago
    If you like this kind of post, you might like this “http explained” post.

    https://peteris.rocks/blog/htop/

    • NooneAtAll3 15 minutes ago
      htop explained*

      I was looking forward for web protocol, but alas...

  • duendefm 1 hour ago
    Thank you for such a quality post.
    • tom2ow 54 minutes ago
      [flagged]
  • m463 1 hour ago
    the end struck me - a picture of an os book. I wonder if students these days retain their books after college, or do they get returned as a rental?
    • linguae 1 hour ago
      I'm a professor at a community college in Silicon Valley, and my students use online textbooks. I try to use Creative Commons or other libre textbooks, but sometimes I use paid textbooks when they are heads-and-shoulders better than their libre alternatives. Some e-textbooks can be accessed on a subscription basis. I admit I prefer non-subscription materials, but a colleague advised me that often the book that students learn from is different from a good reference book that students can use once they've already learned the material. For example, my colleagues and I have had great success with an online, interactive textbook for discrete math. While the subscription is unfortunately only valid for the duration of the course, once students have learned discrete math, they could buy a used copy of Rosen's discrete math textbook as a reference.

      The nice thing about e-textbooks is not needing to carry around a bunch of heavy books. I remember the tomes I had in my college days, such as Stewart's Calculus.

      • NooneAtAll3 14 minutes ago
        just hint students towards anna's archive and then sky's the limit
    • post-it 1 hour ago
      I bought as few textbooks as I could, but the few that I did buy are sitting in my parents' basement bookshelves somewhere.
  • jmclnx 2 hours ago
    Interesting post, it made me wonder. At one time FreeBSD swap usage/logic was far better than what Linux did. Is that still the case ?
    • man8alexd 14 minutes ago
      FreeBSD didn’t have memory overcommit and instead used strict swap reservation - each allocated anonymous memory page was supposed to have a corresponding swap page. This required 2x RAM swap space, otherwise you would get “out of swap” when forking a large process. FreeBSD implemented memory overcommit around 2000.
    • 0x457 41 minutes ago
      Yes, It's just not every tool is aware of ZFS ARC. Which is what this post is about. Author just describes in an odd way.
    • shevy-java 1 hour ago
      I remember how NetBSD promoted itself as running on many more toasters than Linux once.

      Then some NetBSD dev wrote on their mailing list that this is no longer true. Linux runs on more toasters now. (And also top 500 supercomputers, but toasters are the real metal to the petal test.)

      These fights always remind me of:

      https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

      It's an interesting piece of history too. I kind of evaluate it a bit differently, e. g. my summary is "momentum beats academic perfection". Which is not completely what it is about, but it is my own imperfect TL;DR summary.

      • bee_rider 49 minutes ago
        This basically fits my stereotype of BSD being a little bit more hardcore while Linux is a little more accessible… when the question was “can you install an OS on a toaster,” BSD had an advantage. Now that normal engineers have to make IOT toasters (for some reason) Linux should have the advantage, right?
        • sublinear 46 minutes ago
          Normal engineers don't do that either.
      • Levitating 45 minutes ago
        why did that url point me to a scrotum in an egg cup
        • UnlockedSecrets 28 minutes ago
          Seems like at a glance that website if it sees a referral from ycombinator, it redirects to that image.... In a private window it loads the 'intended' page.....
  • tom2ow 55 minutes ago
    [flagged]
  • tomeow 1 hour ago
    [flagged]
  • hnloser 1 hour ago
    [flagged]
  • naturalmovement 1 hour ago
    ZFS cache. The end.

    User installs an unfamiliar server OS with an enterprise filesystem and is stunned when it works differently. I fail to see a teachable moment here.

    • toast0 1 hour ago
      Sure, but also some tools needed fixing.
  • shevy-java 1 hour ago
    This is why I use Linux. :>

    Poor FreeBSD folks though. After so many years trying to present themselves as better alternative, the road just got steeper ...

    • vermaden 2 minutes ago
      No ZFS no problem :)
    • edoceo 1 hour ago
      The OS Crusades are over man