[GRASSLIST:4620] GRASS and Linux kernels

[Nigel McFarlane]

Dear grasslist,

I thought I'd just pass on my experiences with
GRASS on Linux.

I've been doing heavy processing using RedHat Linux 7.2,
which is kernel 2.4.7-10. I'm typically using 98% of
available memory, but without swapping or paging.

I've found that the memory handling of that 2.4.7-10
kernel is not quite there and that a just-in-case-reboot is
needed after every big processing job.

I've now upgraded to kernel 2.4.19 and these memory
problems have gone away, so I recommend that.

This is the first time I've compiled the kernel (from
full source at www.kernel.org), and I can advise it took
me 12 hours, what with pre-reading, test preparation, several
compiles with different module combinations and so on.
I was already well versed in Unix and programming.

On the up side, I use GRUB as a boot loader and that was
unbelievably easy to work with. I also managed to upgrade
without doing a backup. Sounds risky, but my precious
GRASS data was fine the whole way, and I had no reason to
think it would be otherwise. One can test a new kernel
under GRUB experimentally and fall back to the known,
good one as required (but be extremely careful not
to delete/overwrite/disable it).

Hope this assists,

regards, Nigel.