Subject: --largemem | --smallmem

From: Boris Beletsky <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Sep 1996 02:43:08 +0300 (IDT)

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hello
trying to understand the meaning of the following:
- ---------------
'dpkg -help'
[....]
  --largemem | --smallmem    Optimise for large (>4Mb) or small (<4Mb) RAM use
[....]
- ---------------
what exactly this future means , what it affects ?
if anbd could answer or point me to the right doc - whould be great
thks for u're time 

Regards
borik

___
Boris Beletsky <[email-masked]>
(finger [email-masked] for pgp public key)
___
Commorandi natura deversorium nobis, non habitandi dedit

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From: [email-masked] (Bruce Perens)
Date: Fri, 6 Sep 96 21:15 PDT

[What do the dpkg --smallmem and --largemem flags do?]

On a 4MB system, dpkg's in-RAM database is larger than your physical
RAM.  Thus, you use virtual memory for much of this database.
Unfortunately, dpkg has poor locality-of-reference when accessing
this database, so most of its execution time on a 4MB system is spent
in handling VM page faults.

--smallmem makes the working set smaller, and thus makes dpkg run faster
on low-memory systems. --largemem lets it use a large working set, which
runs faster on systems with more memory.

The behavior of the program other than its execution time should be
unchanged.

	Thanks

	Bruce