Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 10:55:36 -0600 From: Nate Williams <nate@sri.MT.net> To: Khetan Gajjar <khetan@iafrica.com> Cc: Nate Williams <nate@sri.MT.net>, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: swap problem - more information Message-ID: <199606201655.KAA10114@rocky.sri.MT.net> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.3.93.960620184625.27000B-100000@ian.iafrica.com> References: <199606201348.HAA09514@rocky.sri.MT.net> <Pine.BSI.3.93.960620184625.27000B-100000@ian.iafrica.com>
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> > file. The *real* problem is that you don't have enough memory. You > > I've got 32mb of physical ram - I dunno bout you, but I think that's > enough for a machine for one person ? My boss has 128MB on his Ultra, and it's not enough for him. I've got 64MB on the Sparc 10 in front of me and it's often not enough. Saying '32MB is enough for one person' implies that you are willing to limit yourself to a certain number of applications. Granted, most people are pretty happy with 32MB, but that doesn't mean *everyone* will be happy. > > can't expect a 4MB box to run decently given 64MB of processes, no > > It isn't a 4mb box. What gave you that idea ? I was making a point. > > matter how much swap you give it. You're either going to have to buy > > more memory or put up with a slow system which is doing more than it's > > capable of. > > I mean, I've redone it now, and the swapping is slower on the vnconfig > "drive" than on the swap partition - I mean, a *lot* slower. Yep, it's going through the FS, vs. going directly to the disk. > > However, on the bright side isn't it great that you *can* run 64MB of > > processes on a 4MB system. It may be slow, but it does work. :) > > I installed FreeBSD on a 386sx-16 with 4 mb of RAM, and it made for a > great web-server! However, my machine is a bit more than that, but not > performing like it :-( If you're swapping that much it means you don't have enough memory for all of the applications you are running. How can it be otherwise? If you don't have enough memory, you need to get more. Now, if this is a transient problem that occurs rarely then adding more swap is a solution. That means using a swap file is okay since it is a rare condition. However, if swapping happens *all* the time then adding more swap will just speed up things, but you'll still be swapping *all* the time. If you're willing to settle for 'swapping all the time' but having it swap quickly, pick up another hard-drive and swap to it. This gives you two advantages. 1) You don't have to modify your existing system. 2) Data is spread out over two different spindles. You no longer have the heads trying to be at two places at the same time. On my system I have a *really slow* 40MB SCSI drive a friend gave to me. I use it for swap since I *rarely* touch the drive, and when I do I'm using both my fast regular drive and the slower 40MB drive. If I was *really* concerned about performance I'd get more memory, but I'm not. Nate
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