Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 1 Jun 1998 18:23:58 +0400 (MSD)
From:      "Ekaterina N. Ivannikova" <kate@forsys.msk.ru>
To:        Andrzej Bialecki <abial@nask.pl>
Cc:        freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: firewall/router setup?
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSI.3.90.980601174003.4498A-100000@ns.forsys.msk.ru>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.3.95.980601150835.18314B-100000@korin.warman.org.pl>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
 

On Mon, 1 Jun 1998, Andrzej Bialecki wrote:

> On Mon, 1 Jun 1998, Ekaterina N. Ivannikova wrote:
> 
> > 
> > 
> > On Mon, 1 Jun 1998, Andrzej Bialecki wrote:
> > > 
> > > For the exact interpretation of this sysctl in 2.2.5 you should ask John
> > > Dyson - he's the person behind it.
> > >
> > 
> > Well, isn't there another way ? Could I make a very small RAM disk and 
> > tell FreeBSD to swap on it ? If yes _how_ can I make a RAM disk for 2.2.5 ?
> 
> I'm pretty sure this won't work the way you expect it to. If the VM
> subsytem feels like it needs to swap out some pages, then it means it's
> low on memory, i.e. it lacks the free pages. Given a constant amount of
> RAM available, if you take some of it to make a RAM disk, this space will
> be permamently lost to the VM subsystem, and consequently it will have
> even less free pages to use, and it will start swapping much earlier.
> 
> So, using up some memory to create a RAM-based swap area makes things
> worse, not better.
> 

Sure. But it would be far worse if the system thought there was swap 
space somewhere and counted on it. If I can not find a correct way of 
telling it there is no swap available, I'd prefer to fool it this way.
After all memory is always finit, swap or no swap.

I downloaded build scripts for PicoBSD 0.31 and all conf files include a 
line: 
config 		kernel root on wd0a swap on wd0a

What does 'swap on wd0a' mean ? Will the kernel expect to find an IDE 
disk with a swap area ? Or will it be meaningless until a swapon is issued ? 

Thanks for your tip on mount_mfs.

Ekaterina

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-small" in the body of the message



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSI.3.90.980601174003.4498A-100000>