zfs discuss - Jun 2007 - zfs kills box, memory related?

Hello, I''m new to OpenSolaris and ZFS so my apologies if my questions
are naive!

I''ve got solaris express (b52) and a zfs mirror, but this command locks
up my box within 5 seconds:
% cmp first_4GB_file second_4GB_file

It''s not just these two 4GB files, any serious work in the filesystem
(but I suspect the larger the file the worse it gets) bring the box to its
knees.

I''ve tried setting the maximum ARC size (seting c,p,c_max with mdb) but
it doesn''t help. Any other suggestions?

As a newcomer my other questions are things like:
1) how can dtrace be used to debug this?   (I know about truss but dtrace sounds
more cool!)
2) how do I upgrade my kernel to the latest release in case it is already fixed?
 a) I''d like different entries in grub in case the new one is faulty!
 b) I don''t want to prevent my box from using future patches, but the
BFU warnings about this are quite scary
3) I don''t know if this is related to zfs, but if this zfs filesystem
is exported via samba and accessed from a laptop via a wireless router the
performance drops to almost zero after about half a minute. Using snoop shows
long periods without any packets, then short sporadic bursts.
 
 
This message posted from opensolaris.org

arb wrote:
> Hello, I''m new to OpenSolaris and ZFS so my apologies if my
questions are naive!
>
> I''ve got solaris express (b52) and a zfs mirror, but this command
locks up my box within 5 seconds:
> % cmp first_4GB_file second_4GB_file
>
>   
You are 6 months out of date, start by upgrading to the latest build.

You didn''t say what your system specification is.  The output from
zpool
status would help.

Ian

2007/6/10, arb <arb at sat.dundee.ac.uk>:
> Hello, I''m new to OpenSolaris and ZFS so my apologies if my
questions are naive!
>
> I''ve got solaris express (b52) and a zfs mirror, but this command
locks up my box within 5 seconds:
> % cmp first_4GB_file second_4GB_file
>
> It''s not just these two 4GB files, any serious work in the
filesystem (but I suspect the larger the file the worse it gets) bring the box
to its knees.
>
> I''ve tried setting the maximum ARC size (seting c,p,c_max with
mdb) but it doesn''t help. Any other suggestions?
If this is on a 32-bit machine, you may be running out of virtual
memory for the kernel. You can try this, and reboot:
eeprom kernelbase=0x50000000

This will limit your userspace processes to about 1Gb.

I would download a new DVD and do an upgrade from that.