Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 11:08:19 -1000 From: Clifton Royston <cliftonr@tikitechnologies.com> To: "Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC" <chad@shire.net> Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: swap space Message-ID: <20050503210818.GA13135@tikitechnologies.com> In-Reply-To: <D1E87824-3EDF-4E57-AF92-C1BB6ED668F2@shire.net> References: <000601c5500e$85b4f3c0$0a01a8c0@ops.cenergynetworks.com> <20050503204542.GB10776@xor.obsecurity.org> <D1E87824-3EDF-4E57-AF92-C1BB6ED668F2@shire.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 03:02:11PM -0600, Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC wrote:
> On May 3, 2005, at 2:45 PM, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> >Since it's a pain to add swap later you want to make
> >allowances for future expansion (e.g. you'd need 32GB of swap if you
> >ever plan to add 32GB of RAM).
>
> I understand that people recommend as much swap as you have ram or
> more. However, is this required and why?
It's needed if you want to be able to collect a crash dump if the
system panics.
> I have a dual opteron
> system running i386 5.3-release (with released patches) and it has
> 4GB RAM and only 2GB of swap, which is hardly ever touched, and when
> it is, just in small amounts.
That's as it should be!
> Why is this a problem? (If it ever needs the 2gb of swap I am in
> trouble as the load at that time would be sky high and the machine
> not really responsive anyway)
Yes indeed, you do not want to be running your system with full swap.
You want it only for emergencies.
-- Clifton
--
Clifton Royston -- cliftonr@tikitechnologies.com
Tiki Technologies Lead Programmer/Software Architect
"I'm gonna tell my son to grow up pretty as the grass is green
And whip-smart as the English Channel's wide..."
-- 'Whip-Smart', Liz Phair
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20050503210818.GA13135>