On 07-Dec-99 Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
> Mike wrote:
>
> > Is there a way to configure linux to use more then 128 MB swap space in one
> > partition ?
>
> > so instead of 10 partitions of 128MB i will have one of 1GB.
Yes, with 2.2 and up.
> Before you do this, I want to make sure you understand the implications
> of a gigabyte of swap space. Unlike SunOS which needs one byte of swap
> space for each byte of real memory, Linux ONLY uses swap space when
> there is no more real memory to hold the working sets of every task.
>
>
> Having a gigabyte of swap space means that you will IMHO either have
> most of it wasted or thrash yourself to death (i.e. spend all of your
> cpu and I/O paging).
Not always; depends on kind of tasks being run. Suppose a number-
crunching process allocates several huge arrays (each more than half of the
RAM), does some manipulations with the first one (may take awhile), then
switches to the second, performs some complex transforms with it, switches to
the next, ..., again to the first etc. Then, if the time spent on a single array
exceeds the paging-out time, the swapping is effective.
Another case is memory leaks (say, in X server).
Though, for most typical workstation setups, your reasoning is correct.
Regards,
Evgeny
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/ Evgeny Stambulchik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> \
/ Plasma Laboratory, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel \ \
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