Re: [Help-gnunet] Minimum hardware requirements

[Christian Grothoff]

On Wednesday 27 October 2004 16:30, John E. Kreznar wrote:
> What are suggested minimum main memory size and CPU speed for a
> respectable gnunet node?

I have always hoped to be eventually able to cross-compile to ARM and run it 
on my Zaurus (200 mhz, 32 MB memory).  But so far the cross-compilers have 
failed me :-).  Of course, "respectable" is a fuzzy term.  

> What configuration parameters can be manipulated to squeeze gnunet
> into a smaller machine?

Reduce the disk quota and change the database type to anything but gdbm, 
preferably directory.  The disk-quota determines the size of the in-memory 
bloomfilter, which is the largest chunk of memory that gnunetd allocates 
directly.  Also, the gdbm databases are memory hogs (since they use some 
caching).  Switching to directory will eliminate those. Other than that, 
compile without '-g' (no debug symbols) and reduce the amount of bandwidth 
(which will in turn reduce the number of connections your node establishes 
and thereby the number of buffers that are needed).  There are some other 
places that can be tuned, but this should be enough to get gnunetd down to 
less than 8 MB, with hardcore settings possibly even in the range of 2 MB. 
Below that you probably will have to start hacking on the code changing some 
parameters.  And I would not go below 100 Mhz processors since the crypto 
will then definitively start to be a real a problem.

> Do these qualify as FAQs?

Maybe, but since they're not answered in the FAQ yet, I'll answer this here 
for now :-)

Christian