[Date Prev][Date Next] [Chronological] [Thread] [Top]

Re: [rtl] Minimum swap disk space required by RTLinux?


Robert & Patricia Warner wrote:
> Reading a few books and on-line docs about installation, they indicate
> that it is recommended if not highly recommended to have swap disk
> space.  I do understand that it is merely an option (swapon/swapoff),
> the recomendations are 2xPhysical RAM not to exceed 128M in multiples
> of 4K. [Allocating swap space] What my question really meant to ask is
> what are the recomendations for RTLinux?  Are they (the
> requirments/recomendations) similar for RTLinux as they are for
> Linux?  In addition, I wanted to ask if anyone has a fully tested
> system functioning without swap space.  Sounds like some people do.
> 
> Reading Chapter 5. Memory Management of The Linux System
> Administrators' Guide by Lars Wirzenius gives me the impression that
> Linux 'needs/prefers' swap space.   RTLinux?

On normal workstations, swap is very useful, as it allows the user to
run applications that don't fit into physical memory, although with
quite noticeable performance impact. But if you know that everything
you'll do on the machin will be able to cope with only the physical
RAM, there's really no need for swap.

I often run Windoze based Digital Audio Workstations with swap disabled.
Due to Windoze' crappy memory handling, this actually improves system
performance a lot, apart from the memory limit. (Which is no big deal,
since I always install huge amounts of RAM in such systems - needed
for buffering while recording/playin audio and also makes the machines
run most other applicatons without problems.) The desktop and
applications get A LOT quicker in response, since they're not swapped
out as soon as you leave them alone for a moment.

The same should go for Linux systems, except that Linux does not think
hard drives are faster than RAM, like Windoze seems to do...


//David

--- [rtl] ---
To unsubscribe:
echo "unsubscribe rtl" | mail majordomo@rtlinux.cs.nmt.edu OR
echo "unsubscribe rtl <Your_email>" | mail majordomo@rtlinux.cs.nmt.edu
----
For more information on Real-Time Linux see:
http://www.rtlinux.org/~rtlinux/