From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Nov 21 16: 2: 3 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BBF6D37B401 for ; Thu, 21 Nov 2002 16:02:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.au.darkbluesea.com (mail.au.darkbluesea.com [203.185.208.1]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3A00843E6E for ; Thu, 21 Nov 2002 16:02:00 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from d.anker@au.darkbluesea.com) Received: (qmail 10610 invoked by uid 82); 21 Nov 2002 23:59:52 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?10.0.0.188?) (10.0.0.188) by bandit.au.darkbluesea.com with SMTP; 21 Nov 2002 23:59:52 -0000 Subject: Re: A question of where to put swap From: Duncan Anker To: Cliff Sarginson Cc: FreeBSD List In-Reply-To: <20021121234453.GA62470@raggedclown.net> References: <20021121234453.GA62470@raggedclown.net> Content-Type: text/plain Organization: Dark Blue Sea Message-Id: <1037923311.14956.10.camel@duncan.au.darkbluesea.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.2.0 Date: 22 Nov 2002 10:01:51 +1000 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, 2002-11-22 at 09:44, Cliff Sarginson wrote: > I am in the business of re-arranging my disk layouts to reflect the > realities if life :) > My FreeBSD system currently runs on a SCSI-3 Disk, but I have two > modern, fast IDE disks that will be gaining a considerable amount of > free space in the re-arrangements. I tend to run during the course of > the day several extremely memory loving programs which cause > paging/swapping to occur. I would like opinions on whether I would > notice an improvement if I moved the swap area (which lives on the SCSI > disk with the rest of the system) to the front of one of the IDE disks. > I intend to make a new slice on the IDE disk anyway. > > I cannot afford any more memory (my mobo will not take it anyway). > I ask this more out of curiosity than because it is a particular problem > to me at the moment .. but future plans may change the criticality of > such decisions. (I am not sure there is such a word as criticality...). > > Thanks for any input. > I believe you are supposed to put a swap partition on every physical disk, up to 4, for optimum swap usage, allowing enough space for future memory expansions (which doesn't seem relevant here). I'm not sure how mcuh swap is good, but I think it's at least twice physical. As far as where to put it, I have seen various recommendations on putting swap on the outside of the disc (presumably to do with angular velocity) which I guess is the front. The first partition is where I put the swap on my Mac, but I can't say if it made any difference, since Apple seems to think everybody wants one big disk and makes it really difficult to use partitions effectively. As far as FreeBSD goes, it at least lets you do what you want if you are savvy enough to know what you are doing, and I can't see that it would hurt. Perhaps you could do some benchmarking? -- The information contained in this email is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you may not disclose or use the information in this email in any way. Dark Blue Sea does not guarantee the integrity of any emails or attached files. The views or opinions expressed are the author's own and may not reflect the views or opinions of Dark Blue Sea. Dark Blue Sea does not warrant that any attachments are free from viruses or other defects. You assume all liability for any loss, damage or other consequences which may arise from opening or using the attachments. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message