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Date:      Sat, 13 Oct 2018 15:19:23 +0100
From:      Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve@sohara.org>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Cc:        RW <rwmaillists@googlemail.com>
Subject:   Re: swap to a sparse file
Message-ID:  <20181013151923.edca08f54b508dc98b91cb37@sohara.org>
In-Reply-To: <20181013145247.0a4b7f05@gumby.homeunix.com>
References:  <20181011014705.GA17798@admin.sibptus.ru> <20181011085114.bfcdb701b3644728a71eaa38@sohara.org> <20181012193633.7dc32f86@gumby.homeunix.com> <20181013081118.9e8632405e555c3bf2f9a722@sohara.org> <20181013145247.0a4b7f05@gumby.homeunix.com>

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On Sat, 13 Oct 2018 14:52:47 +0100
RW via freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> wrote:

> On Sat, 13 Oct 2018 08:11:18 +0100
> Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 12 Oct 2018 19:36:33 +0100
> > RW via freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Thu, 11 Oct 2018 08:51:14 +0100
> > > Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> > >   
> > > > On Thu, 11 Oct 2018 08:47:05 +0700
> > > > Victor Sudakov <vas@mpeks.tomsk.su> wrote:
> > > >   
> > > > > Is there any good reason I can't just "truncate -s2G /swap0" and
> > > > > make the swap a sparse file?     
> > > > 
> > > > 	Just one - if the space isn't there when the system needs
> > > > it there will be a panic.  
> > > 
> > > Is that really the only reason? I've not paid much attention, but
> > > the warnings I've heard about this have made it sound a lot worse.  
> > 
> > 	There's not much worse the system can do than panic, other
> > than deadlock which might happen if memory needs to be allocated in
> > order to add blocks to the file. IIRC swap on a zvol can deadlock
> > that way.
> 
> 
> Yes, but filling up a drive is relatively avoidable - particularly if
> there's space reserved for root. 

	True enough, although if you are counting on having the space
available then pre-allocating it is a strong guarantee and prevents the
performance penalty of adding a block to a file as an overhead of swapping.

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve@sohara.org>



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