From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Nov 3 14:26:17 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from dv-db.com (dv-db.com [207.159.141.95]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6F14C37B406 for ; Sat, 3 Nov 2001 14:26:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from mark2 (host217-35-26-36.in-addr.btopenworld.com [217.35.26.36]) by dv-db.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id WAA23777; Sat, 3 Nov 2001 22:25:55 GMT Message-ID: <012601c164b6$4bf46d60$0200a8c0@mark2> From: "Mark Hughes" To: "Gary W. Swearingen" Cc: References: <008601c1642e$7138ddf0$0200a8c0@mark2> Subject: Re: Swap space with 3GB RAM Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 22:23:50 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 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 > > So, that given, any problems putting the swap space at the end of the > > partition table instead of near the start as one normally would? > > I'm no kernel expert, but lots of reading has never uncovered a problem > with that. I think the only reason for putting it first is to try to > place it on the outer disk tracks which sometimes xfr data faster. My > current swap FreeBSD partition is in the second 1/4 of my 40 GB disk. > > P.S. I wouldn't use swap at all in your case, though I've yet to be that > RAM-rich to do without it. I think you read too much into tuning(7)'s > words "perform best". I'm fairly sure that it's just referring to > performance in paging/swapping situations that you will not have. Maybe > you could benchmark a kernel build, say, with and without the swap and > let us know for sure so others don't feel the need to be so wasteful of > disk. Rememeber, it only says it "can" lead to inefficiencies: Personally I'd agree that from a performance point of view we may be better off without swap at all - however the reason for having the swap even when you don't need it is, I think, so you can do some sort of memory dump to the swap if you have problems. I'm not sure of the technicalities, and if we were short on HDD space then i'd skip it, but we've got plenty more HDD space than we'll need for a long time to come, so it's not a problem to put it in. I was just wondering about any performance issues that would arise from having the non-used swap at the "wrong end" of the partition table. Mark -- Mark Hughes - DVD & Film Content Manager, Technical Officer Digital Spy Ltd http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/ Your number one source for digital media and entertainment news! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message