From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Thu May 23 13:27:30 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [8.8.178.115]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5A38C838 for ; Thu, 23 May 2013 13:27:30 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from ronald-freebsd8@klop.yi.org) Received: from smarthost1.greenhost.nl (smarthost1.greenhost.nl [195.190.28.78]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2024CF9 for ; Thu, 23 May 2013 13:27:29 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.greenhost.nl ([213.108.104.138]) by smarthost1.greenhost.nl with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1UfVYF-0000gv-9c; Thu, 23 May 2013 15:27:27 +0200 Received: from [81.21.138.17] (helo=ronaldradial.versatec.local) by smtp.greenhost.nl with esmtpsa (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1UfVYC-0007no-UM; Thu, 23 May 2013 15:27:24 +0200 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed; delsp=yes To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, "Michael Gass" Subject: Re: Swap Warning Message? References: <20130523125520.GA14671@csbsju.edu> Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 15:27:24 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: "Ronald Klop" Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20130523125520.GA14671@csbsju.edu> User-Agent: Opera Mail/12.15 (Win32) X-Virus-Scanned: by clamav at smarthost1.samage.net X-Spam-Level: - X-Spam-Score: -1.9 X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=disabled version=3.3.1 X-Scan-Signature: 4052b6d1c9976086d5ab5ce040fcf5b8 X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 13:27:30 -0000 On Thu, 23 May 2013 14:55:20 +0200, Michael Gass wrote: > Updated 9.1 to 9 stable on an old PII with 256 MB of memory. > (FreeBSD runs fine on this machine). After updating have > been getting the following warning on startup: > > warning: total configured swap (524288 pages) exceeds maximum recommended > amount (497056 pages). > warning: increase kern.maxswzone or reduce amount of swap space. > > I allocated 2.0 GB of swap when I installed. This was not a problem > in the past. > > Should I ignore this warning or do I need to do something? Do you ever use that amount of swap? Swap needs some memory for administration of which page goes where so it has a cost to increase swap too much. If you are swapping 2 GB on 256 MB I don't think you have a very usable machine, but I don't know the details of what you are doing. Maybe your swap is on very fast SSD. My advice would be to monitor your swap usage and reduce the amount of swap to a little more than you really use. Probably 1 or 2 times the amount of RAM. Ronald.