From owner-freebsd-current Wed Nov 27 10: 1:34 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 34AF437B401 for ; Wed, 27 Nov 2002 10:01:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from apollo.backplane.com (apollo.backplane.com [216.240.41.2]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D0F0243EAF for ; Wed, 27 Nov 2002 10:01:32 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dillon@apollo.backplane.com) Received: from apollo.backplane.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by apollo.backplane.com (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id gARI1VOM018763; Wed, 27 Nov 2002 10:01:32 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dillon@apollo.backplane.com) Received: (from dillon@localhost) by apollo.backplane.com (8.12.5/8.12.5/Submit) id gARI1VdN018760; Wed, 27 Nov 2002 10:01:31 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dillon) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 10:01:31 -0800 (PST) From: Matthew Dillon Message-Id: <200211271801.gARI1VdN018760@apollo.backplane.com> To: Slawek Zak Cc: Marcin Dalecki , current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: sysinstall + swap partition requirement References: <3DE4DEE8.8000808@gmx.net> <20021127151001.GC50355@prioris.mini.pw.edu.pl> Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I think it's reasonable to configure a swapless system if it has a large amount of memory... for example, more then a gigabyte. I don't think it's critical that we 'fix' the safety check for the 5.0 release though. Swap is generally a good thing no matter how much memory you have because the ability of the system to page-out totally idle pages (like pages from getty's and other system daemons that are typically always idle) allows that ram to be reused for additional disk cache. A system with only 192MB of ram should definitely have swap. It may sound like a lot but you will use every drop of it if you install certain large workstation programs like Gimp or OpenOffice and having swap will make those programs work better. It depends on the eye of the beholder, I suppose. -Matt Matthew Dillon :On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 04:04:08PM +0100, Marcin Dalecki wrote: :> During a fresh install of the DP2 I noticed that sysinstall didn't :> allow me to configure the system *without* any swap paritions. :> :> Well this doesn't make sense, since: :> :> 1. The system has perfectly fine 192MB of RAM, thus the installation :> should scceed anyway... :> :> 2. I intendid to use SWAP-over-vnode to work around GCC's "template :> compilation :> eats RAM" struggle. :> :> I guess this "safety check" is a leftover from the days where one had :> typically :> 16MB of RAM + 100MB of swap on a system... : :I don't know if anything has changed in 5.x, but VM in BSDs in general :doesn't work too well without swap. Swap is useful for system crash :gathering anyway. : :/S To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message