Re: [gentoo-user] How many GB for / partition?

[Uwe Thiem]

On 23 February 2006 18:12, Dave Nebinger wrote:
> Richard Fish wrote:
> > On 2/23/06, Dave Nebinger <dnebinger@××××.com> wrote:
> >> This is never true.  Swap is *always* called for, and for a good reason.
> >
> > No, it isn't.  For my single-user laptop with 2G of RAM, I actually
> > prefer that the OOM kill any runaway process that is gobbling up RAM.
> > My laptop disk (even at 7200rpm) is too damn slow for swap to be at
> > all useful.  The system _will_ be dead until swap is exhausted and the
> > OOM kicks in anyway.  The only reason I have a swap partition at all
> > is for suspend2 hibernation.
>
> But again you have shown that swap is *always* called for.  You've got
> 2gb ram, yet you still need swap for hibernation.

I don't use hibernation. ;-)

>
> >> Your example of having a real-time responsive app requiring memory
> >> residence is a determining factor of how much physical memory you'll
> >> need to keep the app resident.
> >>
> >> But the truth of the matter is this will not be your only app running on
> >> the system.  Throw some big memory hogs into play, i.e. an active X
> >> session running locally and that remote X session you've started from
> >> work, and pretty soon you can find yourself eating up that 1gb that you
> >> thought would be fine.
> >
> > No one would ever place a real-time responsive app on a desktop system.
>
> So if your argument is that it would only go on a server, are you also
> arguing that it would only go on a dedicated server?  Or is it a
> multi-function server that's also running perhaps a web server, an app
> server, an email server, ftp server, etc.?

You wouldn't run such an app on a server that offers services like FTP or 
such.

I was actually involved in a project once that did that kind of stuff on a 
desktop. It was a dedicated desktop, though. ;-)

Your main argument is that one needs swap as a safety net if one runs out of 
ram. So you have, say 1 GB of ram and 1 GB of swap. What if you run out of 
swap? Or: If that 1GB of swap on top of your 1GB of ram is enough for you to 
never run out of swap, what's wrong with replaces it with another 1GB of ram 
if you can afford it? Where is the bloody difference, except that you get a 
faster box?

Uwe

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