From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 7015 invoked from network); 5 Dec 2004 00:28:43 +0000 Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (156.56.111.197) by lists.gentoo.org with AES256-SHA encrypted SMTP; 5 Dec 2004 00:28:43 +0000 Received: from lists.gentoo.org ([156.56.111.196] helo=parrot.gentoo.org) by smtp.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.41) id 1CakGZ-0004Mm-Hx for arch-gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org; Sun, 05 Dec 2004 00:28:43 +0000 Received: (qmail 7598 invoked by uid 89); 5 Dec 2004 00:28:27 +0000 Mailing-List: contact gentoo-user-help@gentoo.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail Reply-To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@gentoo.org Received: (qmail 6042 invoked from network); 5 Dec 2004 00:28:26 +0000 From: Simon Windsor To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org In-Reply-To: References: <49bf44f104120306566d7e95cc@mail.gmail.com> <1102117306.10326.3.camel@sf.rout.dyndns.org> <49bf44f10412031709175d496@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Sun, 05 Dec 2004 00:27:54 +0000 Message-Id: <1102206474.4421.34.camel@gaul.cornfield.org.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.0.2 (2.0.2-3) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: More memory? X-Archives-Salt: 80e9780c-4bbc-4682-a411-476da9ea3375 X-Archives-Hash: 4c5fc42dd8eb67fade0a6ef310e68ee2 Hi SWAP is not necessarily a bad thing. It is mealy a simple way of moving unused code from memory so that it can be better used, ie disk caching. Swap can be bad if you have insufficient memory to run your processes. If your system has lots of disk activity, the OS will assign memory to cache the disk. This may where you memory is going. You say that your system is using perl. What else? Apache? MySQL/PgSQL? etc ... Please more info .. All the best Simon On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 20:45 -0600, Gabriel M. Beddingfield wrote: > Grant wrote: > > >> If you don't want it to swap try 'man swapoff' and 'man fstab' > > > > It seems like swap is there for a reason so I don't want to disable > > it. What I do want to be able to do is run my system in a manner that > [snip] > > Just turn it off. You don't need it unless you run out of RAM. Swap is > just for "virtual RAM." You don't *need* virtual RAM unless you run out of > physical RAM. > > You may still need 2GB RAM in the future... but turning off swap won't hurt > anything. Using 'swapoff' and 'swapon' will let you try-before-you-buy. > Editing fstab (comment out the line with the swap partition) will make it > so for every boot-up. > > What happens when you run out of RAM? The application doesn't start up. It > doesn't crash the system. Once when attempting a Gentoo install on a 486 I > ran out of memory when using tar. I didn't crash, it just didn't untar my > file. I turned on swap, and everything worked just fine. > -- Simon Windsor Eml: simon.windsor@cornfield.org.uk Tel: 01454 617689 Mob: 07960 321599 -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list