Installations
To be able to do some development, where an integrrated environment would be really helpful, I installed Distributed Netbeans again. That is: Netbeans 5.5.1 on Aphrodite (and Demeter), the IDE Server (FT2, FT3 still to come) on Diana – which requires Java to be (re)installed as well (using the version (1.5.0-3)).
Diana fits the minimal requirements of the package: 256Mb memory and a 500Mhz Alpha chip: memory is just right, the processor is a 20% faster…
To use it, additions to the startup commandprocedures were needed, and that gave me the opportunity to do some cleanup there as well. One thing I had forgotten earlier, was starting the T4 batch queue, now it should wakeup after reboot as well.
In itself, installation was no problem (of course).
Running the IDE server, however, requires some system parameters to be changed: WSMAX must be extended (to 300000, over twice the current value) and CHANNELCOUNT must be tripled. (Could be much less, but since AdvancedServer is still in the pipeline, I’ll have to take care of that as well).
I also anticipated a heavier load on the pagefiles, I pumped them to a massive 1.5 Gb all together. Stupidly high for a 256 Mb machine, I know. Knowing Java – and my previous PHP trouble in mind, what’s against it? Bcause all secondary pagefiles are on the local 9Mb disk, I had to do some cleanup there as well but that was due to be done anyway. A full INIT would have been nice, I just didn’t have time enough to do so, I would have to do yet another boot (to a minimal system).
Anyway, AUTOGEN gave me new settings with no real surprises. Since both SYSGEN parameters are non-dynamic, I had to reboot Diana. More than once, to be true, since I put the pagefiles specs in MODPARAMS.DAT as well and made some mistakes and had to remove the mistakes – and forgot to generate new files so after reboot, the pagefile sizes weren’t changed ~)
After reboot, all came up nicely. Including the IDE server, causing about a third of all processes fall into some OUTSWAPPED mode. It turns out that this new JAVA kit turns on the FAST VM by default and that requires a lot of memory.
So I shutdown the IDE server, and will fire it only when really needed.
The net result of these settings? I don’t know yet – that’s where T4 comes in. I don’t think there will be a lot of problems, there are a few processes swapped out but that could well be caused by the PHP engine being busy at the moment 🙂
I think the minimal requirements are for a system that dowes nothing else but the IDE (and some minor tasks, perhaps). I think I’ll have to take Meg Watson’s advise: get myself an Itanium box, with at least 1Gb of memory….