1y ago

Arch Linux Increasing Its vm.max_map_count To Help Steam Play Games & Other Software

www.phoronix.com

Just a moment...

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there are a few Windows games running on Linux via Steam Play (Proton), that [the previous vm.max_map_count] limit can actually be exceeded -- DayZ, Hogwarts Legacy, Counter Strike 2, and other games.
Sounds good, especially if Ubuntu, Fedora, and other distros have already made this change. Are there any downsides to raising this value?
- The only potential con I can find of raising it is from a redhat solution thing (https://access.redhat.com/solutions/99913)
  Raising the limit may increase the memory consumption on the server. There is no immediate consumption of the memory, as this will be used only when the software requests, but it can allow a larger application footprint on the server.
  So I guess it just means that apps are less constrained so when an app or game is particularly a ram hog it can eat up more ram
- Not really it seems. Steam has raised it to the MAX_INT - 5, Fedora originally planned to do so to but held off after concerns from engineers that it could lead to situations where having too much mapped would lead to the kernel killing other processes to solve OOM situations so they settled on the number that has now also been adapted by Arch. At least, according to another Phoronix article.
  
  Steam has raised it to the MAX_INT - 5
  Now I'm interested where the 5 comes from.
Wasn't there also something related to Yuzu that needed this to be upped for certain games too?
I know it's not the same thing, but this kinda reminds me of the old GDI object limit in Windows which had an upper limit of 65,536. If you reached that limit your system would start exhibiting all sorts of weird glitches, including not being able to launch any apps even if you had plenty of free RAM.
increasing its default value
Wait-
default value
Nah. Can’t be an arch user. Defaults are for losers.

10 comments