Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
It must be a percentage or something. I didn't get 128MB, not even 256; I got 384MB (if I recall correctly). Couldn't size it down. I wonder if it's whatever one cylinder is. -Gary- Seems odd that you can't size it down Gary. Most of the installations I've done come up 250meg and I generally drop it down to 200 without any problems. On my own machines I use Partition Magic and set it for whatever I want. Cheers --- Larry
Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
Running Linux, Pg 52 - A single swap file or partition may be up to 128MB (more with the latest kernels).* If you wish to use more then 128MB of swap (hardly ever necessary), you can create multiple swap partitions or files - up Beware the rate at which numbers become outdated in books :-) Take a look at page 37 of the same book. It says "You should have at the very least 8mb of RAM; however it's strongly suggested that you have at least 16mb." In a later paragraph it goes on to say "Amounts of RAM greater than 64mb need a boot-time parameter." In short, the numbers and constraints amay not apply to v2.2 of the kernel and may not reflect the growing demands of X/Gnome/KDE and large graphical apps for memory space. I don't know about you but I wouldn't think if trying to run a typical Linux workstation on a 8-16mb machine. to 16 in all. For example, if you need 256MB of swap, you can create two 128MB swap partitions. Obviously we know that this is no longer true as LM defaults to 250mb on 128mb machines. LPI Prep Kit General Linux I, Pg 48 - Your swap partition should be twice the amount of physical RAM installed on your system. The maximum size of a swap This I don't understand. In fact, the more memory I put in a machine the less need I should have for swap. But recall, Running Linux is "strongly suggesting 16mb of memory, so twice that in swap is only 32mb. You'd end up with a 48mb memory limit which is well below the standing RAM in most of our current machines. What I get from all this Larry is that for the i386 based machines, the general rule of thumb is double the RAM up to 128MB of swap. If your resource monitoring shows a high useage level for the swap, add another. I don't think such rules of thumb make much sense. Think about this scenario: 1) Using 64mb RAM and 128mb swap and everything is working great with current user demand. 2) Add memory to bring machine to 512mb RAM, maintaining user demand constant. In this second scenario would you really see a value in having a gigabyte of swap space? User demand can be served with 1/3 of the installed RAM, when would the swap be used in any significant way? Times change and one of the things that's changed is that we're no longer trying to get multi-tasking to occur in a small memory space (small defined as being way less than user demand). I suspect that the "twice your RAM" rule of thumb has more to do with efficiency (if your swap becomes more than twice your RAM it's either not going to be used (too low a demand) or there's simply not going to be enough RAM to 'service' the demand that's requiring the swap. In contrast, using less than twice is quite often the better way to go as you simply don't need it because you've got so much memory in the machine. I'm sure that if you compared swap usage of a 64mb and 512mb single-user machine you'd see this clearly. Cheers --- Larry
Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
LPI Prep Kit General Linux I, Pg 48 - Your swap partition should be twice the amount of physical RAM installed on your system. The maximum size of a swap This I don't understand. In fact, the more memory I put in a machine the less need I should have for swap. But recall, Running Linux is "strongly suggesting 16mb of memory, so twice that in swap is only 32mb. You'd end up with a 48mb memory limit which is well below the standing RAM in most of our current machines. Cheers --- Larry While i spared y'all requoting all of Larry said, I agree with it. 128mb swap limits, the notion of swap = 2x ram, and all the other like statements i've seen in this thread are obsolete, dated, and just plain wrong. While I don't have a 'man swap' entry, I did check 'man swapon', it's dated 1995. In computer terms, that's ancient history. Same is true for most printed docs and books. By the time the ink is dry, they're often obsolete/wrong/misleading. I have 256mb ram. All ram isn't equal. Mine is 2 sticks, one 7ns and one 8ns SDram running at 135mhz cas2 timings on a motherboard that supports it with 3.55v IO, 0 errors. Whether it's using Gimp to enlarge a .jpg by 10x, or ripping Cd's to mp3's while playin audio CD's, and with several other apps runnin, including kernel compiles... I rarely see any swap usage at all. Still, I put a 120mb swap on the drives 1st partition. Old habit I guess ;) -- Tom Brinkman[EMAIL PROTECTED] Galveston Bay
Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
I agree that care is needed when making reference to books. The development of Linux is moving so fast, most are already presenting dated material by the time they hit the streets. I think my first question would be how do you use your machine, i.e. are you the kind of person that opens up a lot of apps and leaves them open or do you open one and then close it before going to the next. Then I would address the actual ratio of physical RAM to the amount of Swap you may need. If I were setting with 64M or less, I would opt for a larger Swap, especially if I keep multiple apps open. I would consider it a temp solution until I could add more RAM. With the price of RAM relatively low and the cost of large hard drives dropping, it may simply boil down to what you are comfortable with. If you have a 20G hard drive, having a 256M swap partition that sees very little use, because you also have 128M (or more) of RAM, wouldn't seem to be a very big deal. Barry :-) On Fri, 03 November 2000, Larry Marshall wrote: Times change and one of the things that's changed is that we're no longer trying to get multi-tasking to occur in a small memory space (small defined as being way less than user demand). I suspect that the "twice your RAM" rule of thumb has more to do with efficiency (if your swap becomes more than twice your RAM it's either not going to be used (too low a demand) or there's simply not going to be enough RAM to 'service' the demand that's requiring the swap. In contrast, using less than twice is quite often the better way to go as you simply don't need it because you've got so much memory in the machine. I'm sure that if you compared swap usage of a 64mb and 512mb single-user machine you'd see this clearly. Cheers --- Larry Surfree.com - nationwide internet access http://www.surfree.com
Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
but what about the original post in this thread that said he wanted swap first, before /usr or / - Original Message - From: "Larry Marshall" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2000 9:02 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem I've got 128MB of RAM and the Swap is only 96MB. When I was running Caldera Open Linux 2.2, I never saw any of it being used. When I installed Mandrake 7.1, swap utilization came up to 2-3%. I suppose if were doing some heavy development work and creating huge programs, I would see it go up. For me personally, I don't see the need to use up more disk space for an area that is seeing little usage. Running large programs is probably more likely to place demands on swap than developing them. If you've got, say Word Perfect/Wine, a spreadsheet program, email tool, and Netscape open (I often have this situation) you'll probably see more swap usage :-) But I think that's the point. The notion that swap "should be" 128m or "twice your RAM" is pure folly. Swap demands, as you well know, is dependent upon memory usage. Cheers --- Larry
Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
Bryce, Might I suggest that you not go to all that trouble with making a huge DOS partition before starting theLinux partitioning and just boot from the CD with a raw disk and use diskdrake when it comes up in the intall. Another thing you may want to do is make the first partition something other than the Swap partition. Make it anything but Swap, and also make that first one a primary. All the others can be extended partitions. Make the Swap the last thing on the drive. Do an expert install and you should probably, if you're not already, do the developer install as well. I think you will find that this will work out quite nicely. I've been doing it this way for quite a long time and each and every install is flawless and error free. -- Mark Larry is NOT a cucumber...he's a stinkin pickle... WITH WARTS! registered linux user # 182469 =/\= PINE 4.21 =/\= ** Surprisingly on Wed, 1 Nov 2000 Brice Ruth had this to say! In order: 1) I've tried the 'automatic' option - I get the error. 2) I create the swap, then root, then usr (I like having swap first on the disk) 3) They are defined properly as swap and ext2 - I actually wanted the usr partition to be ReiserFS, so I was trying that at first, but eventually went with all ext2 4) It isn't a dual boot system - just plain jane all for Linux ... it'll be a test bed. It has an ATAPI cdrom drive, an Award BIOS, and the motherboard is Biostar's M7MKE. 5) I've used RedHat primarily in the past couple years ... started out with Slackware 3.0 (painful). I used Debian for a bit ... though I almost gave up during the install process on that one ... and I've used SuSE a bit, but never installed it. That's on x86 platforms ... I've also installed/used RedHat on SPARC/Alpha and mklinux and linuxppc on Mac platforms. Good enough? :) Side note 1: I've gone in with a win98 bootdisk fdisk /mbr to clear the boot record from any previous junk that might have been in it, I've removed all the partition info from within fdisk created one huge win98 partition (non-formatted) ... when the installer hit that, it asked if I wanted to remove windows proceed, I said yes, and it did some stuff on the drive then popped up that same exact error message ... Side note 2: RedHat 7.0 has finished installing successfully and it seems to be running fine (I'm in X now ...) however, I don't want RedHat 7.0 ... this was just a test, so please keep helping me :) Regards TIA! Brice Larry Marshall wrote: Everything goes along fine until we're in the stage where the hard drive gets partitioned. I have a 6G drive and I wanted to partition it manually ... so I do. 128M swap, 512M root, the rest goes to usr. Don't comment on how intelligent or stupid my partitioning scheme is, please - that shouldn't be at issue here :) You suggest we shouldn't comment on the very subject that seems to be causing the problem. I will however, though briefly. Is this the order in which you're setting up these partitions? Are they defined properly as ext2 and swap? Obviously something is wrong in your setup or you wouldn't be getting errors and having problems. If you could provide a bit more detail of what you're doing (partition order, type, are you dual-booting?, etc) might help. Since you say you're an experienced Linux user, what Linuxes have you used? Cheers --- Larry
Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
Check your 'man swap' and you will find they say 128 MB. You can have up to 8 swap partitions (16 according to the LPI study guide). Uhm...under what conditions? Swap isn't a single number, it's dependent upon OS use of swap space, the size and number of apps being run, etc. If you auto-allocate a 128m memory machine using Mandrake installer it will give you 250m of swap. Cheers --- Larry
Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
On Thu, 02 November 2000, Larry Marshall wrote: Check your 'man swap' and you will find they say 128 MB. You can have up to 8 swap partitions (16 according to the LPI study guide). Uhm...under what conditions? Swap isn't a single number, it's dependent upon OS use of swap space, the size and number of apps being run, etc. If you auto-allocate a 128m memory machine using Mandrake installer it will give you 250m of swap. Cheers --- Larry Here is what I have been reading. Running Linux, Pg 52 - A single swap file or partition may be up to 128MB (more with the latest kernels).* If you wish to use more then 128MB of swap (hardly ever necessary), you can create multiple swap partitions or files - up to 16 in all. For example, if you need 256MB of swap, you can create two 128MB swap partitions. *This value applies to machines with Intel processors. On other architectures like Alpha, it can be higher. LPI Prep Kit General Linux I, Pg 48 - Your swap partition should be twice the amount of physical RAM installed on your system. The maximum size of a swap partition is 128MB, but you can have up to 16 separate swap partitions. The recommended minimum size is 16MB for the operating system to function at its best. man mkswap - With S=4096 (as on i386), the useful area is at most 133890048 bytes (almost 128MiB), and the rest is wasted. What I get from all this Larry is that for the i386 based machines, the general rule of thumb is double the RAM up to 128MB of swap. If your resource monitoring shows a high useage level for the swap, add another. Barry :-) Surfree.com - nationwide internet access http://www.surfree.com
Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
NO At 06:14 PM 11/01/2000 -0800, you wrote: Ed Tharp wrote: hey, I am really a newbie , but should not your swap be twice the size of the ram? - Original Message - From: "Brice Ruth" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2000 4:19 PM Subject: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem Greetings! Veteran Linux user here, tryin' out Mandrake Linux for the first time ... First off, I can't get through the install. Here's what happens: Everything goes along fine until we're in the stage where the hard drive gets partitioned. I have a 6G drive and I wanted to partition it manually ... so I do. 128M swap, 512M root, the rest goes to usr. Don't comment on how intelligent or stupid my partitioning scheme is, please - that shouldn't be at issue here :) The installer partitioning interface works fine, I click "done", it pops up a message about writing the partition table to disk "ok" and then I get the error ... some kind of incomplete sentence about swap. Here it is verbatim: An error occurred swap area needs to be. WTF? so I hit "OK" ... try again ... I've tried a million different things ... I've tried using ALT+F2 to get to the command line, used the fdisk on the CD to manually partition the drive, write out the partition, reboot the system ... no go. This isn't some crazy system ... fairly new, actually. AMD Athlon 700 w/ 6G Seagate medalist pro drive, 128M ram, 66MHz UDMA capable, but I think the drive is actually a 33MHz ... Any help at all would be most sincerely appreciated! Regards, Brice Ruth Check your 'man swap' and you will find they say 128 MB. You can have up to 8 swap partitions (16 according to the LPI study guide). -- Barry :-) Registered Linux User #183879/pre font size=3 /blockquotebr /font Squashman dit, embrasse mon fesse.
Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
I've got 128MB of RAM and the Swap is only 96MB. When I was running Caldera Open Linux 2.2, I never saw any of it being used. When I installed Mandrake 7.1, swap utilization came up to 2-3%. I suppose if were doing some heavy development work and creating huge programs, I would see it go up. For me personally, I don't see the need to use up more disk space for an area that is seeing little usage. Barry :-) On Thu, 02 November 2000, Josh V Friberg-Wyckoff wrote: NO At 06:14 PM 11/01/2000 -0800, you wrote: Ed Tharp wrote: hey, I am really a newbie , but should not your swap be twice the size of the ram? Surfree.com - nationwide internet access http://www.surfree.com
Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
I've got 128MB of RAM and the Swap is only 96MB. When I was running Caldera Open Linux 2.2, I never saw any of it being used. When I installed Mandrake 7.1, swap utilization came up to 2-3%. I suppose if were doing some heavy development work and creating huge programs, I would see it go up. For me personally, I don't see the need to use up more disk space for an area that is seeing little usage. Running large programs is probably more likely to place demands on swap than developing them. If you've got, say Word Perfect/Wine, a spreadsheet program, email tool, and Netscape open (I often have this situation) you'll probably see more swap usage :-) But I think that's the point. The notion that swap "should be" 128m or "twice your RAM" is pure folly. Swap demands, as you well know, is dependent upon memory usage. Cheers --- Larry
Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
It must be a percentage or something. I didn't get 128MB, not even 256; I got 384MB (if I recall correctly). Couldn't size it down. I wonder if it's whatever one cylinder is. -Gary- In a message dated 11/2/2000 9:46:11 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Check your 'man swap' and you will find they say 128 MB. You can have up to 8 swap partitions (16 according to the LPI study guide). Uhm...under what conditions? Swap isn't a single number, it's dependent upon OS use of swap space, the size and number of apps being run, etc. If you auto-allocate a 128m memory machine using Mandrake installer it will give you 250m of swap. Cheers --- Larry
[newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
Greetings! Veteran Linux user here, tryin' out Mandrake Linux for the first time ... First off, I can't get through the install. Here's what happens: Everything goes along fine until we're in the stage where the hard drive gets partitioned. I have a 6G drive and I wanted to partition it manually ... so I do. 128M swap, 512M root, the rest goes to usr. Don't comment on how intelligent or stupid my partitioning scheme is, please - that shouldn't be at issue here :) The installer partitioning interface works fine, I click "done", it pops up a message about writing the partition table to disk "ok" and then I get the error ... some kind of incomplete sentence about swap. Here it is verbatim: An error occurred swap area needs to be. WTF? so I hit "OK" ... try again ... I've tried a million different things ... I've tried using ALT+F2 to get to the command line, used the fdisk on the CD to manually partition the drive, write out the partition, reboot the system ... no go. This isn't some crazy system ... fairly new, actually. AMD Athlon 700 w/ 6G Seagate medalist pro drive, 128M ram, 66MHz UDMA capable, but I think the drive is actually a 33MHz ... Any help at all would be most sincerely appreciated! Regards, Brice Ruth
Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
One other note ... as a pot shot in the dark, I thought I'd try to install RedHat 7.0 (bad idea, I know - just wanted to see if the install would work or if my hardware was horked) ... it appears to be working (installing packages now ...) -Brice Brice Ruth wrote: Greetings! Veteran Linux user here, tryin' out Mandrake Linux for the first time ... First off, I can't get through the install. Here's what happens: Everything goes along fine until we're in the stage where the hard drive gets partitioned. I have a 6G drive and I wanted to partition it manually ... so I do. 128M swap, 512M root, the rest goes to usr. Don't comment on how intelligent or stupid my partitioning scheme is, please - that shouldn't be at issue here :) The installer partitioning interface works fine, I click "done", it pops up a message about writing the partition table to disk "ok" and then I get the error ... some kind of incomplete sentence about swap. Here it is verbatim: An error occurred swap area needs to be. WTF? so I hit "OK" ... try again ... I've tried a million different things ... I've tried using ALT+F2 to get to the command line, used the fdisk on the CD to manually partition the drive, write out the partition, reboot the system ... no go. This isn't some crazy system ... fairly new, actually. AMD Athlon 700 w/ 6G Seagate medalist pro drive, 128M ram, 66MHz UDMA capable, but I think the drive is actually a 33MHz ... Any help at all would be most sincerely appreciated! Regards, Brice Ruth
Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
Everything goes along fine until we're in the stage where the hard drive gets partitioned. I have a 6G drive and I wanted to partition it manually ... so I do. 128M swap, 512M root, the rest goes to usr. Don't comment on how intelligent or stupid my partitioning scheme is, please - that shouldn't be at issue here :) You suggest we shouldn't comment on the very subject that seems to be causing the problem. I will however, though briefly. Is this the order in which you're setting up these partitions? Are they defined properly as ext2 and swap? Obviously something is wrong in your setup or you wouldn't be getting errors and having problems. If you could provide a bit more detail of what you're doing (partition order, type, are you dual-booting?, etc) might help. Since you say you're an experienced Linux user, what Linuxes have you used? Cheers --- Larry
Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
Ed Tharp wrote: hey, I am really a newbie , but should not your swap be twice the size of the ram? - Original Message - From: "Brice Ruth" [EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2000 4:19 PM Subject: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem > Greetings! > > Veteran Linux user here, tryin' out Mandrake Linux for the first time ... > > First off, I can't get through the install. Here's what happens: > > Everything goes along fine until we're in the stage where the hard drive > gets partitioned. I have a 6G drive and I wanted to partition it > manually ... so I do. 128M swap, 512M root, the rest goes to usr. > Don't comment on how intelligent or stupid my partitioning scheme is, > please - that shouldn't be at issue here :) > > The installer partitioning interface works fine, I click "done", it pops > up a message about writing the partition table to disk "ok" and then I > get the error ... some kind of incomplete sentence about swap. Here it > is verbatim: > > An error occurred > swap area needs to be. > > WTF? so I hit "OK" ... try again ... I've tried a million different > things ... I've tried using ALT+F2 to get to the command line, used the > fdisk on the CD to manually partition the drive, write out the > partition, reboot the system ... no go. > > This isn't some crazy system ... fairly new, actually. AMD Athlon 700 > w/ 6G Seagate medalist pro drive, 128M ram, 66MHz UDMA capable, but I > think the drive is actually a 33MHz ... > > Any help at all would be most sincerely appreciated! > > Regards, > Brice Ruth > > Check your 'man swap' and you will find they say 128 MB. You can have up to 8 swap partitions (16 according to the LPI study guide). -- Barry :-) Registered Linux User #183879
Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
1) I've tried the 'automatic' option - I get the error. 2) I create the swap, then root, then usr (I like having swap first on the disk) 3) They are defined properly as swap and ext2 - I actually wanted the usr partition to be ReiserFS, so I was trying that at first, but eventually went with all ext2 If they're all defined properly as far as Mandrake is concerned you wouldn't be getting an error, right? You might try putting root in front of swap and seeing what happens. 5) I've used RedHat primarily in the past couple years ... started out with Slackware 3.0 (painful). I used Debian for a bit ... though I Mandrake IS RedHat but I've never seen either of them set things up with swap first. Not saying you can't but since it's not working for you you might try it with your boot location in the first ext2 partition. Side note 1: I've gone in with a win98 bootdisk fdisk /mbr to clear the boot record from any previous junk that might have been in it, I've removed all the partition info from within fdisk created one huge win98 partition (non-formatted) ... when the installer hit that, it asked if I wanted to remove windows proceed, I said yes, and it did some stuff on the drive then popped up that same exact error message ... I've never trusted Mandrake's partitioner so can't vouch for its ability to do things properly. I think you said, however, that you'd tried setting things up with fdisk and had the same problems. I always use Partition Magic myself. I should also say that I don't have much experience with Mandrake 7.2 as I don't feel it's as stable as 7.0 or 7.1. They've released some stuff that's a bit half-baked in my view and while I don't have the problems you're describing, I've got some of my own. I run 7.1 on my work machine. Side note 2: RedHat 7.0 has finished installing successfully and it seems to be running fine (I'm in X now ...) however, I don't want RedHat 7.0 ... this was just a test, so please keep helping me :) Don't blame you...RedHat seems to be facing the same problem I'm seeing with Mandrake...all hot to release "new" products, whether they're really ready or not. They've just got to have some "NEW" banners on their list of features, whether those are improvements or not :-) Good luck. Would sure like to hear your reasoning for wanting your swap at the head of the drive. Cheers --- Larry
Re: [newbie] Installing 7.2: swap problem
Thanx for the notes :) I've downloaded the 7.1 iso - I'll give that a shot tomorrow. As for having the swap first, I recall reading something when I first started using Linux (maybe in the Linux Adminstrator's Guide?) that optimal placement of the swap partition (at that time, with those kernels) was at the beginning of the drive ... since the swap partition extends memory and 'seek' time depends in part on location, I guess that was the reasoning :) Thanx again. -Brice Larry Marshall wrote: 1) I've tried the 'automatic' option - I get the error. 2) I create the swap, then root, then usr (I like having swap first on the disk) 3) They are defined properly as swap and ext2 - I actually wanted the usr partition to be ReiserFS, so I was trying that at first, but eventually went with all ext2 If they're all defined properly as far as Mandrake is concerned you wouldn't be getting an error, right? You might try putting root in front of swap and seeing what happens. 5) I've used RedHat primarily in the past couple years ... started out with Slackware 3.0 (painful). I used Debian for a bit ... though I Mandrake IS RedHat but I've never seen either of them set things up with swap first. Not saying you can't but since it's not working for you you might try it with your boot location in the first ext2 partition. Side note 1: I've gone in with a win98 bootdisk fdisk /mbr to clear the boot record from any previous junk that might have been in it, I've removed all the partition info from within fdisk created one huge win98 partition (non-formatted) ... when the installer hit that, it asked if I wanted to remove windows proceed, I said yes, and it did some stuff on the drive then popped up that same exact error message ... I've never trusted Mandrake's partitioner so can't vouch for its ability to do things properly. I think you said, however, that you'd tried setting things up with fdisk and had the same problems. I always use Partition Magic myself. I should also say that I don't have much experience with Mandrake 7.2 as I don't feel it's as stable as 7.0 or 7.1. They've released some stuff that's a bit half-baked in my view and while I don't have the problems you're describing, I've got some of my own. I run 7.1 on my work machine. Side note 2: RedHat 7.0 has finished installing successfully and it seems to be running fine (I'm in X now ...) however, I don't want RedHat 7.0 ... this was just a test, so please keep helping me :) Don't blame you...RedHat seems to be facing the same problem I'm seeing with Mandrake...all hot to release "new" products, whether they're really ready or not. They've just got to have some "NEW" banners on their list of features, whether those are improvements or not :-) Good luck. Would sure like to hear your reasoning for wanting your swap at the head of the drive. Cheers --- Larry
