[nflug] AMD64 Debian 'Etch' Stability

Tue Jun 10 18:57:44 EDT 2008

2^32 = 4 GB

on the X86 architecture the kernel can be configured for a 2GB/2GB split (user/kernel),  or a 3.5/0.5 split or on a PAE kernel processes can address the full 4GB address space (actually up to 64GB as PAE enables a full 36 bit address space (64GB))

You'll find on many distros that if u have 4GB of ram,  it shows up as 3.3-3.6 GB of memory unless running a PAE kernel in which it'll show up as 4-4.1GB of memory.

 -- David J. Andruczyk

----- Original Message ----
From: Dennis Ruzeski <denniruz at gmail.com>
To: nflug at nflug.org
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 6:36:58 PM
Subject: Re: [nflug] AMD64 Debian 'Etch' Stability

Shouldn't it be 2GB ram if we're talking about a 32 bit limitation?

On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 4:46 PM, David J. Andruczyk
<djandruczyk at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 64 bit  OS's are needed for only the few reasons:
>  1. you have more than 4 GB of ram, AND you want your processes to be able to address all of it (Databases,  high performance virtualization,  VMware ESX, Xen, etc)
>  2.  You need very large virtual address space (niche applications, large datasets, distributed dataset processing)
>
> if u don't run large DBs's with more than 4 GB of physical RAM, or have a hot virtualization setup where the VM's need more than 4 GB of ram,  then u really do NOT gain anything from using a 64 bit OS.   In many cases u loose out due to some apps not being stable or available in 64 bit iterations (typically only a problem for proprietary drivers (ATI/nvidia) and software, i.e. flash.)
>
>
> Every new box we just installed into our new datacenter at work is 64 bit capable,  of the couple hundred I installed,  9 machines got 64 bit OS's (4 database servers, and 5 LDAP servers (as they have 32GB or RAM each)).
>
>
> -- David J. Andruczyk
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: K O <wpos2 at roadrunner.com>
> To: nflug at nflug.org
> Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 11:40:04 AM
> Subject: Re: [nflug] AMD64 Debian 'Etch' Stability
>
> To start, an opinion, or rather, a rhetorical question: how long has 64
> bit hardware and software been around, and why is it as poorly supported
> as it is?  Perhaps there is a good reason for this, thereby making my
> question not rhetorical.  In any case, I'm all ears.
>
> Speaking of plugins, nspluginwrapper makes 32 bit plugins work in 64 bit
> browsers (at least theoretically).  By virtue of that package, Flash has
> been known to work for my 64 bit Firefox.  (You Tube videos are usually
> without grief.)  It's marginally less fussy in my 32 bit Opera.  (What
> do the Windows 64 users do for a Flash plugin?)
>
> I happen to share Mr. Smith's opinion about Flash.  I pound my fists
> when I get to a home page and all I see is a place holder for a Flash
> animation without a "non-Flash version" link.  (Come on now: doesn't
> everyone have Vista with IE?)
>
> Ken Smith pisze:
>> On Fri, 2008-05-23 at 08:26 -0400, Robert Wolfe wrote:
>>> Good morning all!
>>>
>>> I was wondering what some folks' thoughts were on the stability of the
>>> AMD64 version of Debian Etch are?  I have been wanting to push the use
>>> of the 64-bit version on our higher-end servers here at work (have a
>>> bunch of new AMD64-based servers that have dual quad-core Xeons in
>>> them with 16GB of RAM that act as our VMWare Server servers).  I know
>>> of at least one person that claims that the 64-bit version of Debian
>>> is not stable enough to run as a server OS.
>>>
>>> Could someone confirm or not whether this is true?
>>>
>>
>> As of FreeBSD 7.0 the majority of people should probably still stick to
>> 32-bit on workstations but if you don't wander too far into "exotic
>> stuff" (mostly the multimedia type stuff...) it's at least possible to
>> use a 64-bit system on a workstation.  Both my office machine and home
>> machine are running 64-bit and I don't run into too much stuff I
>> desperately need that doesn't work.  The baseline windowing goop
>> (Gnome/KDE) seem to work just fine.  I don't have Flash working yet but
>> sometimes I consider that a benefit... :-)  Opera is just now working on
>> a FreeBSD 64-bit version so I need to use their development downloads
>> for that, it's not "production" quite yet.
>>
>> You're likely to see exactly the same sort of situation for Debian...
>> Most of the Linux systems here in the Department are RedHat and I see
>> the same trends there.  We've chosen to go mostly 64-bit but for example
>> our firefox executable is 32-bit because of plug-in issues, etc...
>>
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