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Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: |
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> emm, from my very personal point of view: no |
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> |
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> swap is horrible slow. Its use must be avoided at any cost. Swap sucks. |
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> Everything is faster than accessing swap. So hitting the disk to read or |
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> write some files is IMHO better than hitting the disk to shove X into swap. |
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> |
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> X in swap is another problem. You can be sure, if X is forced into swap, |
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> because gcc uses up all ram for itself, everything sucks. Mouse is jerky, |
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> windows need ages to get displayed. |
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> |
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|
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Depends - if you're not using X then you won't mind X getting swapped |
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(running emerge from ssh/etc). If you are using X then chance are it |
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won't get swapped in the first place. If the issue is gcc using all ram |
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for itself, then the presence/absence of tmpfs probably won't make much |
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difference - gcc still has to run. |
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|
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I don't see why swap should be any better/worse than any other form of |
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disk access. If anything it is superior as it allows the kernel to |
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manage it like any other form of RAM, and the kernel isn't forced to |
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flush it out to disk within some time (writes to a filesystem are forced |
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to sync within some time to prevent data loss - this hurts performance |
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and is totally unnecessary for temporary build files that will get |
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deleted when you re-run emerge anyway). |
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|
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Even if you don't have a tmpfs writing to disk will tend to drive unused |
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ram into swap - the system will swap idle memory to make room for |
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cache/buffers - where the recently-written files will reside in ram. |
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|
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Now, in an extreme case where you have less RAM than the resident size |
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of the apps you have running then swap will be horrible - but that is |
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because you're continuously swapping in and out. And I doubt a tmpfs |
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will make much difference either way. |
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Now, if somebody has empirical data I'll certainly pay attention, or at |
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least a lot of expertise. However, I wouldn't jump to the conclusion |
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that swap is worse than ordinary disk writes - linux manages swap fairly |
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well all things considered. If you don't like how it is being managed |
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there are kernel settings that can be used to tweak it (swappiness, etc). |