Sun Performance and Tuning: Java™ and the Internet, Second Edition

Parameters Derived from maxusers

When BSD Unix was originally developed, its designers addressed the problem of scaling the size of several kernel tables and buffers by creating a single sizing variable. The scaling needed was related to the number of time-sharing terminal users the system could support, so the variable was named maxusers. Nowadays, so much has changed that there is no direct relationship between the number of users a system supports and the value of maxusers. Increases in memory size and more complex applications require much larger kernel tables and buffers for the same number of users.

The calculation of parameters derived from maxusers is shown in Table 14-2. The inode and name cache are described in more detail in “Directory ...