Re: Static Swap

Matthew Sayler (mpsayler@zen.as.utexas.edu)
Tue, 13 Apr 1999 09:42:14 -0500

I remember back in '99 when Riley Williams wrote:
> 2. Where a system has multiple hard drives, Linux appears to be more
> stable with a swap area on each drive than having some drives with
> no swap area on them.

Yes, and make sure you explicitly give them equal priorities.

% /sbin/swapon -s
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/sda2 partition 21500 1976 1
/dev/sdb2 partition 20476 2084 1
/scratch/SWAPFILE file 40956 412 1

(from fstab)
/dev/sda2 none swap sw,pri=1 0 0
/dev/sdb2 none swap sw,pri=1 0 0
/scratch/SWAPFILE none swap sw,pri=1 0 0

It's been my experience that if you don't specify a priority it will fill
up the first swap, then the second, then the third, instead of
spreading the swap out across different drives. I noticed a big
performance jump when I gave explicit priorities on this old
486..

Matt

-- 
/* Matt Sayler -- mpsayler@zen.as.utexas.edu -- atwork?astronomy:cs
   http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/mpsayler   -- (512)471-7450
   Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations? */


-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/