Expanding secondary pool space

On busier systems with plenty of memory (my 11/83 has a full 4MB of PMI RAM), you may wish to allocate additional secondary pool space. The reasoning behind doing so is outside the scope of this document; you are highly encouraged to read “Chapter 8: Memory Management” in the RSX-11M-PLUS and Micro/RSX System Management Guide (pp.304) manual.

Expanding the secondary pool temporarily can be done in a few different ways, but doing so permanently requires a sysgen and VMR. First, temporarily; LOAD /EXP=SEC /SIZE=n can be used to increase the size of a given pool (in this example, the secondary pool as specified by /EXP=SEC) by n words:

>LOAD /EXP=SEC /SIZE=100

You can also expand the size of the secondary pool at boot in the file LB:[1,2]SYSPARAM.DAT, using the SECONDARY_POOL=n statement. This will increase the size of the pool by n 32-word blocks.

Finally, the recommended method of increasing secondary pool is via sysgen and VMR. First, you will need to generate a new system image:

>set def [200,200]
>@sysgen

Do not boot the new image yet. Create a new one with PIP, and make sure the /BL: flag does not exceed your amount of available system memory or things will break in strange and terrifying ways:

>set def [1,54]
>PIP RSX11M.SYS/CO/NV/BL:1026.=RSX11M.TSK

Next, edit SYSVMR.CMD and find the SET /PAR=SECPOL line- this is where your system's secondary pool is defined. On a system with a lot of memory you can comfortably set this to 10000. If you have limited resources you will want to start smaller, in increments of maybe 500-1000 at a time, monitoring available pool space and stability as you go.

Regardless, you will now need to re-VMR and boot the new image:

> vmr @sysvmr
[...]
POOL=1200:13640.:13640.:2004
>boo [1,54]
XDT: 87

XDT>g
RSX-11M-PLUS V4.6   BL87


>
 sav /wb/mou="/acp=unique/lru=14/win=30"
 [...]
 >set /secpol
 SECPOL=3833.:4096.:93%