Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1999 22:20:07 -0800 From: "Dan O'Connor" <dan@jgl.reno.nv.us> To: "Christopher Michaels" <ChrisMic@clientlogic.com>, "'Sheldon Hearn'" <sheldonh@uunet.co.za> Cc: "Freebsd Questions" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Using MFS for SWAP (Was: The size of root and swap) Message-ID: <03d001bf2756$0c6b69e0$0200000a@danco.home>
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>Just out of curiosity, if you used MFS for /tmp and someone dumped a large
>file into /tmp, wouldn't that suck down your available ram?
From Marshall Kirk McKusick's book "The Design and Implementation of the
4.4BSD Operating System":
"The memory-base filesystem is designed to store data in virtual memory.
It is used for systems that need to support fast but temporary data, such as
/tmp. The goal of the memory-based filesystem is to keep the storage packed
as compactly as possible to minimize the usage of virtual-memory resources."
(p. 42)
Since MFS uses *virtual* memory, part of it (on a LRU basis) could get
swapped out to your hard drive...
--Dan
** The thing I like most about Windows 98 is...
** You can download FreeBSD with it!
-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Michaels <ChrisMic@clientlogic.com>
To: 'Sheldon Hearn' <sheldonh@uunet.co.za>
Cc: Freebsd Questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Date: Thursday, November 04, 1999 4:44 PM
Subject: Using MFS for SWAP (Was: The size of root and swap)
>Just out of curiosity, if you used MFS for /tmp and someone dumped a large
>file into /tmp, wouldn't that suck down your available ram?
>
>-Chris
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Sheldon Hearn [SMTP:sheldonh@uunet.co.za]
>> Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 1999 4:36 AM
>> To: Nathaniel Schein
>> Cc: Freebsd Questions
>> Subject: Re: The size of root and swap
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 01 Nov 1999 15:01:17 PST, "Nathaniel Schein" wrote:
>>
>> > Somewhere in a man page or Complete FreeBSD version 2.x.x I remember a
>> > suggestion that the root partition should be small in order to reduce
>> the
>> > possibility of corruption. Is this really a factor?
>>
>> No.
>>
>> > What happens if somebody dumps a huge file in /tmp?
>>
>> You close his or her account. :-)
>>
>> Lots of folks use MFS for their /tmp partition, so its use does not
>> affect the root partition. See the MFS option dcescription at:
>>
>> http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/kernelconfig-config.html
>>
>> > Should the / directory's size vary depending on
>> > the availability of space? What is the suggested size and why?
>>
>> Check out sysinstall's own suggested size, with the Auto option in the
>> fdisk UI.
>>
>> > Also, it used to be that the amount of swap was 2x the memory. Is this
>> > still true or since memory commonly 128-256MB+ is there a suggested
>> > upper bound?
>>
>> I think the generally touted magic number is 2.1x RAM depending on
>> expected usage. The more swap you have, the more potential there is for
>> paging. If you have "too much swap", it'll take a lot of paging before a
>> moggy process runs out of memory and is killed.
>>
>> Ciao,
>> Sheldon.
>>
>>
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