First a little history, I manage 10,000 Unix systems (as part of the Break/Fix group) for a large international bank. So I am a little sensitive to lack of core dumps or failed core dumps. As not having them makes my job a pain. About a third of these are Linux. The problem with using common disk space for core dumps would be that if root or var were full that common space would not be available for dumping the core. So to guaranty a good cores you either need an unused partition of at least RAM size that does nothing useful 99.99% of the time or a swap partition of at least RAM size that could at least be useful for buying time in a case of a memory leak. You still need to find space to save the core if root or var are full but you still have the core. And either way you have some amount of disk space used up that is equal to the size or ram. Why not have it as swap?
So in my mind having useful swap (although mostly unused on a well designed box) as opposed to a total useless core partition, just make since. On Mar 2, 2013, at 7:12 PM, Tilghman Lesher wrote: > On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 2:17 PM, James Sizemore <[email protected]> wrote: >> I'll have to disagree with Tilghman on this one. You should always have at >> least as much swap as ram, however double would be over kill. If for no >> other reason than to guaranty you get a full core dumps on system crashes. >> Trying to trouble shoot or root cause assess system crashes without good >> core dumps is difficult if not imposable. >> >> Disk space is cheap, if you can afford the RAM having the swap equal it >> should be a trivial cost, and gives you more time to find fast memory leaks >> before systems go catatonic. > > Would you care to share your knowledge for why you think this matters > on Linux? Extra swap might help you on Solaris, where the way that > swap meshes with the system is quite different (and possibly on other > Unix platforms), but I don't think it's going to help on Linux. > You're better off having that amount of space free on the root > filesystem (or whatever filesystem to which your core dumps are > directed), when it comes to Linux. > > -- > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "NLUG" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "NLUG" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
