Anyone here been able to test the limitations of Debian etch and the 2.6 kernel? I am curious to know what the limits on RAM Amounts and Maximum number of processors, Processor speed, etc.

I would like to build a server with 16GB to 32GB of ram but just wondered if there are any current limitations. I know that in older versions of Debian some people couldn't get the system to see more than 4GB but I have been unable to find and verify those that have used more.

Also the server I am thinking about building would start out small but then would be upgraded to it's maximum capacity. I think 4 Quad Core processors should be sufficient. A total of 16 cores, now Debian should have no problem with this. Any way just wanted to know your opinions or know if anyone has tired to max out the Linux kernel.

Also I have been on the site in a while I figured I would check back in to LQ and see what has been going on since my last visit and post. A discussion about this would be a great topic for general forum but interested in Debian more any other flavor.

I wouldn't worry about that since sgi sells machines running Linux with those specs:

16 to hundreds cpu's per system and a maximum of 128TB ram.

Correct. Debian will run fine, provided you go for the 64 bit flavour. Remember, 32 bit address space has a physical limit of 4 GB (2^32=4GB) while 64 bit addresses top out at 18.44x10^18... (to be exact: 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 )

Just my

I don't think that is true anymore. As far as I know you can have up to 64GB on a 32bit system.

Only if you use PAE/hugemem.

true true true


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In Debian, if you use a "486" kernel you'll hit the 4GB limit, but the "686" (32-bit) kernels are compiled with hugemem and will allow up to 64 GB. Of course any 64-bit system will allow more as well.

16 processors and 32GB ram is peanuts compared to what some people are running Linux on (look at IBM's new roadrunner!), so you won't be running into limiting issues there.