From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jul 8 19: 7: 8 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 86B8437B400 for ; Mon, 8 Jul 2002 19:07:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from april.chuckr.org (april.chuckr.org [66.92.147.143]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6EB5443E09 for ; Mon, 8 Jul 2002 19:07:04 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from chuckr@chuckr.org) Received: from localhost (chuckr@localhost) by april.chuckr.org (8.11.6/8.11.3) with ESMTP id g6926wp05422; Mon, 8 Jul 2002 22:06:58 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from chuckr@chuckr.org) Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2002 22:06:58 -0400 (EDT) From: Chuck Robey To: Erik Trulsson Cc: FreeBSD Hackers List Subject: Re: swap & huge mem systems In-Reply-To: <20020709015454.GA6323@falcon.midgard.homeip.net> Message-ID: <20020708220517.K945-100000@april.chuckr.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, 9 Jul 2002, Erik Trulsson wrote: > On Mon, Jul 08, 2002 at 09:30:04PM -0400, Chuck Robey wrote: > > Nowadays, what with the price of fast memory at such low levels, I'm > > buying more memory than I really need, just because it's *so* cheap, the > > price has gone up before, and it's possible (maybe likely) that next > > year's popular new app will need the memory. I'm probably not alone in > > doing this. It's causing me to wonder about how much swap to allocate. > > > > I used to follow the rule that I dedicate twice as much disk memory to > > swap as I have RAM. Now, with my new system, I'm getting a gig of RAM, > > but it seems ridiculous to dedicate 2G of disk to swap. Under these > > conditions, what's the real bottom limit (if you have one gig of RAM) for > > how much swap you can get away with? One Gig? Less? > > Minimal amount of swap possible: No swap at all of course. > Minimal swap if you want to be able to catch core dumps: Physical RAM > size + 64K > Minimal amount of swap you need: Depends on what you are doing, > doesn't it? > > > You don't need to configure any swap at all if you think your RAM is > going to be large enough for everything you do. > > OTOH, considering how cheap disk space is these days, why worry about a > gigabyte or two? Some day you might be running some extremly memory > hungry application(s) and then you might neeed that extra swap. > Running out of swap is No Fun, and should be avoided if practical. > > Personally, in your situation I would probably configure enough swap to > be able to catch a core dump and not much more, i.e. slightly more than > 1G swap. Probably a good compromise, it just feels silly to go for a G of swap when I will probably never use more than 256M (and that not very often). I mostly compile, edit, and web-browse. Thanks for the confirmation (I suspected this answer, but I feel better now about it). > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include C & Java programming, FreeBSD, chuckr@chuckr.org | electronics, communications, and signal processing. New Year's Resolution: I will not sphroxify gullible people into looking up fictitious words in the dictionary. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message