Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 12:36:42 +0000 (UTC) From: jb <jb.1234abcd@gmail.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: "swap" partition leads to instability? Message-ID: <loom.20130526T143506-872@post.gmane.org> References: <1369558712.96152.YahooMailNeo@web165006.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
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M. V. <bored_to_death85 <at> yahoo.com> writes: > > hi everyone, > > I have a 24/7 network server/gateway with FreeBSD-8.2 on a SSD drive. it's partitioned as normal (/ , /tmp, > /var , /usr and swap) for a long time now. But recently I heard from a FreeBSD expert that I shouldn't have > swap partition for my server, and having swap partition could make my server unstable. this was so strange > for me, and I searched a lot but couldn't find a reason for this claim. > > so my question is simple: > - could having a "swap" partition, be a bad thing for my FreeBSD server? and if so, why and in what conditions? > > Cheers! Hi, I think your FB expert was up to something. I bet he spoke out of experience. Swapping by itself can decrease system reliability due to possible data corruption on swap disk or during two-way transfers, with subsequent incorrect RAM and machine crash. But, swapping is also a symptom, not a problem. It is never a good idea to let it get to that point. Badly written, architected, or tuned server app or system are the reason. Think of RDBMS/SQL server processing real-time on-line transactions and how much it goes into setting it up properly for a heavy use. On a smaller scale, consider this example: http://blog.jcole.us/2010/09/28/mysql-swap-insanity-and-the-numa-architecture/ jb
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