freebsd stable - Nov 2004 - using only swap file without swap partition: OK?

Hi,

With 5.3 it has become much easier to add swap as a regular file,
remove it later, or add a bigger or smaller one instead.

The swap partition always causes me little headache: once the
size is choosen at partitioning during install, it's fixed.
I can't size it up or down anymore, unless I go fiddling with
the partition table, which I desperately like to avoid.

So, why not using swapfile without swap partition at all.
Have it on a big partition with lots of space. If there's a
problem with the space, I can easily move the swap elsewhere.
A swapfile is so much more flexible.

Is there a downside of not using swap partition, and have only
swapfile instead?

Thanks,
Rob.

On Sun, Nov 07, 2004 at 07:46:45PM +0900, Rob wrote:
> So, why not using swapfile without swap partition at all.
> Have it on a big partition with lots of space. If there's a
> problem with the space, I can easily move the swap elsewhere.
> A swapfile is so much more flexible.
> 
> Is there a downside of not using swap partition, and have only
> swapfile instead?
What about saving kernel crashdumps? :)


-- 
Pawe? Ma?achowski

On Sun, 7 Nov 2004 21:16, Rob wrote:
> With 5.3 it has become much easier to add swap as a regular file,
> remove it later, or add a bigger or smaller one instead.
>
> The swap partition always causes me little headache: once the
> size is choosen at partitioning during install, it's fixed.
> I can't size it up or down anymore, unless I go fiddling with
> the partition table, which I desperately like to avoid.
>
> So, why not using swapfile without swap partition at all.
> Have it on a big partition with lots of space. If there's a
> problem with the space, I can easily move the swap elsewhere.
> A swapfile is so much more flexible.
>
> Is there a downside of not using swap partition, and have only
> swapfile instead?
You can't save crash dumps, and it is less efficient.

In general you don't need much swap if you have a reasonable amount of RAM,
so
it's not usually necessary to resize your swap when you get more RAM (unless
you want to save crashdumps..)

-- 
Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer
for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au
"The nice thing about standards is that there
are so many of them to choose from."
  -- Andrew Tanenbaum
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