On Fri, 4 Apr 2003 22:40, Adrian 'Dagurashibanipal' von Bidder wrote: > I'd guess that if your machine starts thrashing, you have other problems > than worrying about swap performance. On a server, swap usage should imho > be the rare exception. On a desktop, you'll see more swapping, with > kde/gnome/whatever having grown as they are today (180M swap being used on > my 384M desktop - and no sound/video/graphics app with big data loaded).
Ideally swap would never be used, especially for a server. But it's difficult to predict the interaction between cron jobs, differing loads, the "slashdot affect", and bugs in server software. I think it's safe to predict that eventually your server will have some condition lead to it thrashing. If the swap performance is good then it means that it will take longer to become unusable, thus giving the administrator a better chance to track it down before a hard reset becomes necessary. Ideally you would have a ulimit set for every daemon to reduce the risk of thrashing. I've never seen someone do this though. -- http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/ My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
