Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 17:36:06 -0700 From: "Jin Guojun [DSD]" <j_guojun@lbl.gov> To: Jason Stone <freebsd-performance@dfmm.org> Cc: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org Subject: Re: SWAP size Message-ID: <3EB06BF6.CD475@lbl.gov> References: <20030430162823.I4074-100000@walter>
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Jason Stone wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > > If you have a lot of memory and you are able to control all processes > > not to overrun the system memory, 0.5 - 1x swap is OK; you need some > > swap space to back up yourself in case something happens. That is why > > 2x is recommended; but not required if this is not a server. > > > > For server, 2x may be required, and typically 2.5x is needed. > > Also remember that crash-dumps get written to swap, so if you want to be > able to take a dump in the event of a panic, you need at least as much > swap as physical ram. > > Since crash-dumps are usually a good idea (or at least the ability to take > a dump if your system starts acting strangely), I think you should never > have less than 1x ram on a production system. > > -Jason In fact, becareful when enabling crash dump on a large RAM system, which is very bad idea, in recent practice. I used a 1GB RAM system to do kernel development, when panic, each KB takes 1-2 second to dump, and it also takes similar amout of time to do the savecore when system is up. crash dump on 1 GB memory system takes average 2000 second to complete :-( Recently, we upgraded all major systems to 4 GB RAM since RAM is cheap, the crash dump will take 8000 second to complete according to 1GB dump rate. So, this is the lesson we learnt to use only 64-128 MB RAM system to do kernel development due to crash dump issue, since developing kernel does not need a lot of memory. In this case, you do need a lot of swap since RAM is small. -Jin
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