No matter how small the ammount of data in the swap partition, the system
is likley to hang if it cannot be read...
If you have swap, it must be raid if you don't want the machine to fail...
but it's not all that much space...
On Mon, 10 May 1999, Dietmar Stein wrote:
> Hi
>
> I know what "swapoff -a" will do if there is data laying on the
> swap-partition; but the intention should be to have _NO_ processes (or
> whatever) being swapped out.
> At work we got much HP-Workstations and -Servers; everyone got a
> swap-partition which is of same size as physical memory (or even
> bigger).
> But if they begin to swap performance goes down to nearly 0% - even the
> HP need swap-partitions for allocating at bootup, but we intend that
> they _NEVER_ swap.
> Therefore we use much memory on each machine - and we do also on our
> linux-machines.
>
> You know what I mean? I think there is no need to spend money for a
> second (third) disk to build a raid1-swap (or raid5), because more
> memory will be cheaper.
> Also, I see the "danger" that a swap-disk fails - but how worse is it if
> there is "only" a few kB swap on it?
> May - it is just my point of view.
>
> Greetings, Dietmar
>
> D. Lance Robinson wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > You can run a system without a swap device. But if you do 'swapoff -a'
> > _after_ a swap device failure, you are dead (if swap had any virtual
> > data stored in it.)
> >
> > 'swapoff -a' copies virtual data stored in the swap device to physical
> > memory before closing the device. This is much different than losing
> > access to the swap data due to a failure.
> >
> > <>< Lance.
> >
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > >
> > > Hm,
> > >
> > > I understand the necessary of redundancy; but isn't it the same
> > > if you do a swapoff -a or swap-disks dies on a system?
> > > What I have in mind is the thing, that the system should not swap
> > > at all, so that it is necessary to have as much memory (RAM) as
> > > possible.
>
> --
> "For those about to rock - we salute you!"
> Dietmar Stein, Systemadministrator UNIX/Linux
> http://home.t-online.de/home/dstein2203
> [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
A.J. ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Linux boots, Windows Re-Boots.
Linux - Commoditising Operating Systems since 1991.
