On 11/24/05, PlanAlpha <plan dot alpha at gmail dot com> wrote:
> Greets all-
> I'm a little confused about ram usage with m0n0wall. Reading through
> the mailinglists people have been saying pptp connections are limited
> due to memory constraints. And people are discussing how much ram to
> add. But the docs say it won't use more that 64mb.
>

Note "stock m0n0wall images" below - i.e. limited to 16 PPTP clients
(amongst other things).  If you increase that, you may need more,
which is likely what you were seeing.


> [snip]
> "2.5.4. RAM
> The stock m0n0wall images will not use more than 64 MB RAM under any
> circumstance. You can install as much memory as you like, but even
> with all features enabled and heavy loads, you will not exhaust 64 MB"
> [/snip]
>
> So do I bother adding more? Is this just old documentation?
>

This is very recent documentation, since shortly before 1.2 was
released.  Since 1.2's release, I'll probably revise that a little. 
There are some very limited circumstances where it might use more,
especially if you're using IPsec extensively.

But in 99.9% of m0n0wall installs, adding more is useless.  Check your
memory usage on the front page.  On one of mine with 64 MB, it's at
about 45% with tons of stuff enabled.  On one with 128 MB under heavy
load but fewer used features, it's at 20%.

-Chris