> >> AMD64 FreeBSD 7.0 2 GiB main memory > >> > >> My console says: > >> > >> login: swap_pager: indefinite wait buffer: bufobj: 0, blkno: 22, > >> size: 4096 > >> swap_pager: indefinite wait buffer: bufobj: 0, blkno: 22, size: 4096 > >> swap_pager: indefinite wait buffer: bufobj: 0, blkno: 22, size: 4096 > >> swap_pager: indefinite wait buffer: bufobj: 0, blkno: 22, size: 4096 > >> > >> pstat -sk > >> Device 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity > >> /dev/ad6s10 4590208 96 4590112 0% > >> > >> Wow, using a whole 96K of swap. I don't see any disk related > >> complaints in dmesg. > >> > >> Is this something to worry about? > > > > Yes, the system was *trying* to do swap I/O and timing out while doing > > so.
> isn't swapspace supposed to be on a 'b' partition? Are you using swap > on a slice 10? how is that possible when the i386/amd64 BIOS can't see > more than 4 primary partitions? > > Kris, would you mind giving input to this? How can there be a s10, and > how can you add swapspace to a device that isn't a partition 'b' nor a > file backed swapspace? Those were the only two ways I thought was > supported for swap. > > Dieter, does my questions above sound to be a correct interpretation of > your disk setup? Traditionally swap used the b partition. But then traditionally, there weren't MBR style partitions, called "slices" in FreeBSD-land. I suspect that the computers Unix grew up on (PDP-7, PDP-11, VAX) had to boot from the beginning of the disk, so the a partition went there. The Alpha continues in this DEC tradition. I was about to say that swap went next for speed, since the machines back then never had enough main memory, but those old disks didn't have variable number of sectors on inner vs outer tracks, so the speed would have been the same across the platter. So I'm not sure why swap was next. This machine has 2 GiB of main memory and almost never uses the swap partition, so I put swap at the slow end of the drive. Yes I have swap on slice 10. I use NetBSD's fdisk, as it handles more than 4 slices nicely, unlike FreeBSD's fdisk. As far as I know, the BIOS firmware doesn't need to know about swap. I think the BIOS firmware just loads and runs the MBR, which in turn loads and runs the bootstrap in the selected slice (or loads and runs the MBR in a different disk if you want). I suppose I could put a BSD disklabel on slice 10 and set it up with the whole slice as the b partition. But as far as I can tell FreeBSD is happy with /dev/ad6s10. As I wrote in my previous message I suspect that the pager/swaper is competing for disk i/o. I forgot to ask if there is some sysctl or other knob to lengthen the timeout. The real fix is to improve the i/o fairness, but I've been asking about this for 2-3 years and not getting anywhere. _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
