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Date:      Wed, 24 Feb 2021 11:59:33 -0800
From:      Mark Millard <marklmi@yahoo.com>
To:        Konstantin Belousov <kostikbel@gmail.com>
Cc:        Alan Somers <asomers@freebsd.org>, FreeBSD Hackers <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: The out-of-swap killer makes poor choices
Message-ID:  <EA37F4D3-BCED-405B-BF70-2A97B19A9444@yahoo.com>
In-Reply-To: <YDacl5/AFzFA4nkg@kib.kiev.ua>
References:  <CAOtMX2jYmrK7ftx62_NEfNCWS7O=giHKL1p9kXCqq1t5E1arxA@mail.gmail.com> <CAOtMX2i3Njo=KBP=99_G0%2BKuSa00CVgNvacmzhTaoZUYEhwPPA@mail.gmail.com> <YDYyQ1V/hEAGV%2ByJ@kib.kiev.ua> <1984125.0OzZcVfBr4@ravel> <CAOtMX2iYr4NDYE0xHSa_w1hA5XQ2m9cA28NzPoGbfzAKKox9aQ@mail.gmail.com> <YDacl5/AFzFA4nkg@kib.kiev.ua>

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On 2021-Feb-24, at 10:36, Konstantin Belousov <kostikbel T gmail.com> =
wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 10:34:23AM -0700, Alan Somers wrote:
>> There's another silly problem that I didn't mention in my original =
post.
>> The old rule of thumb is that the swap partition's size should be =
twice as
>> large as the amount of RAM.  However, that's no longer possible in =
many
>> cases.  The kernel imposes a hard limit of 64 GiB (on amd64 at least) =
on
>> the usable size of any swap partition, and many servers now have far =
more
>> than 64 GiB of RAM.  So the advice needs to change with the times.  I =
don't
> I do not think so. The usable size of the swap is determined by the
> amount of swap metadata we pre-configure at boot time. Usually it is
> sized proportionally to the available physical memory, but you can
> override swap zones size manually with the knob.

There was a period of time when the 128 GiByte RAM ThreadRipper
had its previous 192 GiByte swap partition use rejected and I
had to split it into 3 64 GiByte ones. Later I saw a checkin that
was a correction to some calculation (vague memory) and I retried
having one 192 GiByte swap partition and it was again allowed.

The ability to dump to a swap partition when there was a
64 GiByte limitation with 128 GiByte of RAM had implications
for the configuration. I actually arranged having a partition
that was only used for dump's potential use. That took some
rearrangement to form a large enough space, making other
tradeoffs to do so.


(I'm not sure if I can find the commit that lead to me switching
back to more than 64 GiByte for a swap file on the large memory
machine. I do not remember details any more.)


>> know what the best size would be for a modern server, but I would =
guess
>> that it must be at least several times the RSS of your largest =
process, and
>> also at least one tenth of RAM (for use as a dump device with =
compressed
>> core dumps).


=3D=3D=3D
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com
( dsl-only.net went
away in early 2018-Mar)




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