Re: 4 MB: no cloning starts / running 'lowmem'

From: Alfie Costa (agcosta@gis.net)
Date: Tue Oct 23 2001 - 23:25:09 CEST


On 23 Oct 2001, at 11:04, Michele Andreoli <mulinux@sunsite.dk> wrote:

> if you check /etc/rc/lowmem, muLinux try desperately
> to set swap automagically for lowmem machine.
> But it try that _using a script_, and scripts does fork().

The only convenient mu I can check today is a v9.x system. It's got a
/setup/rc/lowmem at 2173 bytes, dated 12/19/00. Assuming 'lowmem' hasn't
changed too much since last December...

On low memory systems there is enough memory for the user to type in certain
commands to set up swap, but not enough for the lowmem script to be run. The
problem is too little memory.

On such a system, there's two possibilities. There is either too little memory
to run any script, zero, nada, nothing; or there is enough memory to run one or
more levels of scripts, "hello world!", just not enough to get to the point
where 'lowmem' starts.

In the first case, (too little memory to run any script), nothing can be done.
The user must type in the commands, and be content with that.

In the second case, (one or more scripts will run, but not enough), then
something might be done. The 'lowmem' script, or its code, can be put in a
higher level script, or run before other scripts that eat memory, or changed so
it uses less memory.

Assuming the second case is true:

Is 'lowmem' called by another script? Maybe it, or something like it, could be
run alone.

The 12/19/00 version of 'lowmem' uses ash functions, like 'try_dos_swap()' and
'try_linux_swap()'. Functions are faster that script code, but also consume
precious RAM. In 'lowmem' these functions are only called once, so they can be
safely "unrolled"... that is their code can be put into the main script, and
the functions deleted.

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