bind 8.2.4: limiting used memory?

[Michael Renzmann]

Hi Brad.

>         Hmm.  On an embedded device without swap and with only 32MB, I
> really question the usefulness of running any kind of process there
> that could take up any variable amount of RAM.  

You found the reason why I would like to tell bind, how many RAM it may
take up. :) 

BTW: I mistyped in my previous posting, the device has 64 MB RAM.

>         Since a heavily queried nameserver can easily chew up 256MB or
> more, I really don't think that you can reasonably expect to get any
> kind of caching nameserver on this kind of a box.

The dns cache is meant to help a bit with saving some of the dns
queries. Most of the networks it is used in won't query that much, and
networks that do it will most likely already have a "huge" dns cache
seperated from the router. So it must not be the perfect caching
solution with "as many ram as it needs".

> > When I last tried to compile bind 9, it was terribly much bigger
> > than bind 8. Is there a way to reduce its executable size
> > footprint as well?
>         You should be able to build it with shared libraries, and if
> you then "strip" the binaries, you should be able to get the file
> sizes down to something reasonable.

I did all these things last time, and iirc the executable was somewhere
near the 1 MB size. But nevertheless I will try again, the last try
happened quite a while ago.

> However, this would kill any ability to be able to debug this
> process.  Of course, you probably don't care since a core file from
> named can easily run well north of 50MB or more....

You're right, this would not fit on the flash which has only 32 MB by
now (and will be much smaller as soon as development state has been
left).

Thanks for your help so far.

Bye, Mike