Just as a reminder: the Memory Rusting Effect, as the name implies, is
not about the minimum memory needed to run Linux 2.1.x or 2.2.x. It's
about the misbehaviour of the MM layer in 2.1.x, when compared to the
adequate behaviour of 2.0.x in small memory configurations.
Alan Cox has sent me the following recipe for triggering and measuring
the Memory Rusting Effect:
time make zImage
find / -print
time make zImage
Comparing the results of the time measurements will show whether the
memory has rusted or not.
Saying that you need > 8Mb (i.e. 16Mb) to run 2.1.x kernels will not
make the problem go away, IMHO. (BTW, the next step after 8Mb on most
motherboards is 16Mb; 12 Mb is really, really an odd case).
We went through much pain to jettison the kernel initialization code,
just to learn that the memory thus freed is being rusted away? ;-)
Question: is there any way to turn off the dcache and reclaim the memory
it was using, in low memory situations?
Cheers,
---------------------
Andrew D. Balsa
andrebalsa@altern.org
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