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Date:      Wed, 27 Nov 2002 10:01:31 -0800 (PST)
From:      Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>
To:        Slawek Zak <zaks@prioris.mini.pw.edu.pl>
Cc:        Marcin Dalecki <mdcki@gmx.net>, current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: sysinstall + swap partition requirement
Message-ID:  <200211271801.gARI1VdN018760@apollo.backplane.com>
References:  <3DE4DEE8.8000808@gmx.net> <20021127151001.GC50355@prioris.mini.pw.edu.pl>

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    I think it's reasonable to configure a swapless system if it has a
    large amount of memory... for example, more then a gigabyte.   I don't
    think it's critical that we 'fix' the safety check for the 5.0 release
    though.   Swap is generally a good thing no matter how much memory you
    have because the ability of the system to page-out totally idle pages
    (like pages from getty's and other system daemons that are typically
    always idle) allows that ram to be reused for additional disk cache.

    A system with only 192MB of ram should definitely have swap.  It may
    sound like a lot but you will use every drop of it if you install certain
    large workstation programs like Gimp or OpenOffice and having swap will
    make those programs work better.  It depends on the eye of the beholder,
    I suppose.

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon@backplane.com>

:On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 04:04:08PM +0100, Marcin Dalecki wrote:
:> During a fresh install of the DP2 I noticed that sysinstall didn't
:> allow me to configure the system *without* any swap paritions.
:> 
:> Well this doesn't make sense, since:
:> 
:> 1. The system has perfectly fine 192MB of RAM, thus the installation
:> should scceed anyway...
:> 
:> 2. I intendid to use SWAP-over-vnode to work around GCC's "template 
:> compilation
:> eats RAM" struggle.
:> 
:> I guess this "safety check" is a leftover from the days where one had 
:> typically
:> 16MB of RAM + 100MB of swap on a system...
:
:I don't know if anything has changed in 5.x, but VM in BSDs in general
:doesn't work too well without swap. Swap is useful for system crash
:gathering anyway.
:
:/S

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