On this day, 13-March-2007 10:30 PM, Duncan wrote:
So in summary, four reasons to keep swap enabled:
1) Old kernels needed it for memory zone management. (N/A for a decently
modern kernel, say 2.6.16 or newer.)
2) Memory mapped file flexibility.
3) tmpfs based PORTAGE_TMPDIR and friends is generally a MUCH more
efficient use of several gigs of memory than turning off swap, but until
you have I'd say 6 gigs memory minimum, you'll want to keep swap enabled
if you do it.
4) Suspend to disk, aka hibernate, uses swap.
#3 and possibly #4 are the important ones.
OTOH, disabling swap entirely, by turning off that config option in
kernel setup before compiling it, DOES significantly simplify kernel code
and memory management. This was in fact the reason I had it off back
when I had only a gig of memory. I had system stability issues due to
unstable memory hardware (cheap memory) at the time, and I figured the
less complicated kernel memory management was, the more stable the system
was likely to be. I don't know if it made much of a difference, but it
definitely wasn't LESS stable. (The memory zone issues did apply back
then, but my hardware simply wasn't stable enough for that to be much of
an issue.)
Thank you to all for advising on the swap issue. The information is very
useful and has helped me to make a decision. I am happy.
For the record, I am going with swap file of 4g.
Once again thank you all for the advice.
P.V.Anthony
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