I like this idea of using a swap file instead of partition (for both my Debian and Ubuntu machines). Is the following code correct for creating the swap file (assuming 1 GB swap file size)?
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=65536 And would the correct use of mkswap be: # mkswap /swapfile Then add this to /etc/fstab: # /swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0 Thanks, Mark On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 2:09 PM, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. < b...@iguanasuicide.net> wrote: > In <631fe46c0907271347g341e048udf74d5ee643e1...@mail.gmail.com>, Mark > wrote: > >A couple of questions (background is below the questions if you want to > >read): > > > >Question 1: In the Debian manual it says a swap partition isn't needed but > >recommended for efficiency. Anyone else installed without swap and had > >success? > > >Is my installation a ticking time bomb if I don't have a swap > >partition? > > Usually, no. Either the OOM killer will kick in or malloc/calloc/realloc > will start failing earlier, so you might want to add swap if either of > those > happens. You'll get OOM messages in /var/log/messages; applications will > either crash or notify you they are out of memory if malloc/calloc/realloc > fails. > > You can use a swap file instead of a swap partition/disk. Just create a > file of the appropriate size with dd, use mkfs.swap on it, and add it to > your fstab. > -- > Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. > b...@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_)) > ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' > http://iguanasuicide.net/ \_/ > >
