[eepro100] eth0: card reports no resources - can you help meidentify which version of this problem I'm having?

[Donald Becker]

On Wed, 12 Jun 2002, Nate Amsden wrote:

> > If the problem is that the kernel is running short of memory, even
> > though the machine has plenty of RAM, try the tuning the VM parameters:
>
> yeah i remember that, what is the potential pitfalls if any of changing
> the parameters? I have never tuned the vm for linux before. I read the
> docs(Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt) from the source on it, but they didn't
> explain to me what good values were to be.

I someone convincingly knew what the correct values were, they would be
changed in the kernel.

The kernels before 2.2 did a much better job of keeping an adequate
amount of free memory for the network stack.  The 2.2 and 2.4 kernels
have different behaviors, but both are much more likely to temporarily
run short or memory, even (especially) with much RAM and swap space.

> also, is there any benefit for making it higher? or downside?

The downside is going too far.  You can have the kernel reserve 60MB of
64MB for its own use, allowing too little for any application to run.

The VM settings for most 2.2 kernel seems to be oriented to 16MB
machines.  Most machines have more memory, and are better served with
higher kernel-reserve settings.

> I run 2.2
> kernels on all my systems. mainly I am interested in is would it
> it severely affect performance, stability, other things (like SCSI and/or IDE
> controllers).

A moderate increase should help most subsystems.

> recompiling, i still get cannot allocate buffer errors(even with
> 768MB ram).

With 768MB RAM, you should definitely increase the kernel-reserve memory
parameter.

-- 
Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Second Generation Beowulf Clusters
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993