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Date:      Tue, 7 Jul 2009 00:21:54 -0700 (PDT)
From:      =?utf-8?B?xaBpbXVuIE1pa2VjaW4=?= <numisemis@yahoo.com>
To:        Dan Naumov <dan.naumov@gmail.com>
Cc:        "freebsd-fs@freebsd.org" <freebsd-fs@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: ZFS: swap on a ZVOL
Message-ID:  <354003.91539.qm@web37307.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

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Dan Naumov wrote:=0AAs far as I know, using swap on top of a "non-trivial" =
filesystem like=0AZFS is considered "unsupported", but it does in fact work=
. You can=0Acreate a ZVOL of arbitrary size (say, 4G) and then do the follo=
wing:=0Azfs set org.freebsd:swap=3Don pool/swapvolname=0Ato have /etc/rc.d/=
zfs enable swap on said ZVOL on every boot. You can=0Aalso do this in an ug=
ly way: put swapon=0A/dev/zvol/<poolname>/<swapvolname> into your /etc/rc.l=
ocal (without=0Ahaving to pass the "org.freebsd:swap=3Don" option to the ZV=
OL).=0A=0ANow the question remains, what kind of issues are expected to ari=
se=0Awhen using swap on a ZVOL and is there any work going to in order to=
=0Aresolve them? One of the issues mentioned is that ZVOL swap cannot=0Ahan=
dle kernel dumps and another, more serious potential issue is a=0Arace cond=
ition where "more swap is needed to swap". Assuming I have a=0Amachine with=
 2gb ram, if I use a 4gb ZVOL swap, am I likely to run=0Ainto any serious i=
ssues assuming that under normal operation, the=0Asystem uses from none to =
very little swap?=0A=0AAFAIK, it was said that race condition you mentioned=
 also exists in OpenSolaris (that was back in the ZFS v6 days).=0ABut, AFAI=
K new versions of OpenSolaris do use swap on ZFS volume as by default (corr=
ect me if I'm wrong).=0ASomebody more knowledgeable should answer this, but=
 this made me thinking that maybe, just maybe that race condition was solve=
d in some ZFS version >v6.=0A=0A=0A=0A=0A      



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