From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Oct 2 18:07:12 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org 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 0E5E616A403 for ; Mon, 2 Oct 2006 18:07:12 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bob@tania.servebbs.org) Received: from mail3.panix.com (mail3.panix.com [166.84.1.74]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6CAB543D46 for ; Mon, 2 Oct 2006 18:07:11 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from bob@tania.servebbs.org) Received: from mailspool3.panix.com (mailspool3.panix.com [166.84.1.78]) by mail3.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id EE8B913A853 for ; Mon, 2 Oct 2006 14:07:10 -0400 (EDT) Received: from tania.servebbs.org (pool-71-247-7-205.nycmny.east.verizon.net [71.247.7.205]) by mailspool3.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D46551130F42 for ; Mon, 2 Oct 2006 14:07:10 -0400 (EDT) From: Bob Organization: TamaraB To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 14:06:38 -0400 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.1 References: <200610020048.47955.bob@tania.servebbs.org> <452110B6.2010800@mac.com> In-Reply-To: <452110B6.2010800@mac.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200610021406.39143.bob@tania.servebbs.org> Subject: Re: SWAP priority X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2006 18:07:12 -0000 On Monday 02 October 2006 09:14, Chuck Swiger wrote: > The swap system knows how to interleave data between the additional swap > areas relatively efficiently, Yes I discovered that. The additional swap space was instantly used as soon as I activated it; and the added swap improved things measurably. Does the swap system take into account current disk activity when it decides to use a particular swap? > that you need to use more than 2GB of swapspace on a machine with 1GB of > RAM, you should add more RAM, not more swapspace.... It is on order. The basis for my question about swap priority was based on an observation that the slowdown was due to swapping AND heavy disk usage. I noticed that when snapshots were being made on the main drive (the one I am using all the time), all other processes went to slow-mode. You see, the lack of enough memory caused the system to swap, and it swapped to the heaviest used raid array. I thought if I could force the system to swap to the other raid array (much less used) with the new swapfile, things would improve even more. All will be cured when more ram is installed, but I thought it would be interesting playing with swap priority. Bob