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1. marjoleink (marjoleink)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 04:23:47 EDT marjoleink

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   !linux !debian 1 more question: I'm going for a box with a 120GB SSD as 'main' drive + eSATA RAID. where to put swap? SSD/RAID/internal HD ?
   • piorekf (piorekf)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 04:50:51 EDT piorekf

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     • marjoleink
     @marjoleink Question is if you really need swap. If you will not be using it I think it is a bad idea to waste space on SSD.
   • piorekf (piorekf)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 04:51:32 EDT piorekf

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     • marjoleink
     @marjoleink On the other hand If you will be using it often definitelly go with the SSD.
   • dper (dper)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 05:06:14 EDT dper

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     • marjoleink
     @marjoleink IMO don't put the swap on RAID. If something strange should occur it would be hard to recognize, perhaps.
   • marjoleink (marjoleink)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 05:34:25 EDT marjoleink

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     • dper
     • happy5214
     • piorekf
     @piorekf @happy5214 @dper thanks! excuse my ignorance when/why would I NOT be using/needing swap?
   • r7 (r7)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 05:41:18 EDT r7

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     • marjoleink
     @marjoleink you need swap if your RAM is insufficient for your needs or for hibernation
   • marjoleink (marjoleink)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 05:49:41 EDT marjoleink

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     • r7
     @r7 I've used hibernation on laptop, never desktop (which often runs backups while I sleep). I'm getting 16GB RAM - but: graphics editing...
   • r7 (r7)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 05:53:55 EDT r7

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     • marjoleink
     @marjoleink photo/graphic editing can be very memory intensive
   • marjoleink (marjoleink)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 06:04:28 EDT marjoleink

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     • r7
     @r7 exactly - although 16GB is a big jump up from my current (effective) 3GB, I'm now often hitting the limit.
   • marjoleink (marjoleink)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 06:06:19 EDT marjoleink

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     • r7
     @r7 I think the Mobo supports up to 32GB, so there's room to grow. Guess I could start sans swap and see how it goes...
   • Joshua Judson Rosen (rozzin)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 09:20:50 EDT Joshua Judson Rosen

     • marjoleink
     Don't disable swap: you want it so that Linux can move allocated-but-idle memory there to free up RAM for active use.
     fandres likes this.
   • Joshua Judson Rosen (rozzin)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 09:25:43 EDT Joshua Judson Rosen

     • marjoleink
     A less intuititive gain: using swap makes reading/writing files on disk faster http://status.hackerposse.com/url/1837
   • marjoleink (marjoleink)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 09:39:43 EDT marjoleink

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     • Joshua Judson Rosen
     @rozzin interesting. my understanding is if I don't disable it AND don't assign a partition, it will be shared under / - correct?
   • marjoleink (marjoleink)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 09:40:46 EDT marjoleink

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     • Joshua Judson Rosen
     @rozzin or are you suggesting I should assign a swap partition on the SSD? if so, how large (given 16GB RAM)?
   • marjoleink (marjoleink)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 09:49:02 EDT marjoleink

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     • Joshua Judson Rosen
     @rozzin interesting read, thanks!
   • dper (dper)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 18:19:22 EDT dper

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     • marjoleink
     @marjoleink Swap is used when your actual memory runs out. If you have a lot of RAM and won't use it all, you won't use swap.
   • samatjain (samatjain)'s status on Thursday, 20-Sep-2012 18:39:16 EDT samatjain

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     • marjoleink
     Considering eschewing disk-based swap and using zram? http://identi.ca/url/73637602
   • marjoleink (marjoleink)'s status on Friday, 21-Sep-2012 01:04:51 EDT marjoleink

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     • samatjain
     @samatjain thank, I could look into that. First, with 16GB of RAM, I need to find out if I need swap at all...
   • Joshua Judson Rosen (rozzin)'s status on Friday, 21-Sep-2012 01:19:51 EDT Joshua Judson Rosen

     • samatjain
     @samatjain, #zram is interesting, but I can't see it doing as much for FS buffer-cache as disk-backed swap does.
   • samatjain (samatjain)'s status on Friday, 21-Sep-2012 01:24:58 EDT samatjain

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     • Joshua Judson Rosen
     @rozzin I don't understand… what does disk-based swap do for fileystem buffer cache? Didn't think it did anything?
   • Joshua Judson Rosen (rozzin)'s status on Friday, 21-Sep-2012 01:32:47 EDT Joshua Judson Rosen

     • samatjain
     @samatjain, see my comments/link earlier in the thread.
   • samatjain (samatjain)'s status on Friday, 21-Sep-2012 01:39:58 EDT samatjain

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     • Joshua Judson Rosen
     @rozzin Interesting read. But something I've noticed when I've 8+ GB RAM… swap is rarely touched, and usage _never_ goes past few MB
   • Joshua Judson Rosen (rozzin)'s status on Friday, 21-Sep-2012 02:47:53 EDT Joshua Judson Rosen

     • samatjain
     `How much extraneous crap you can offload to swap' is highly dependent on how much extraneous crap you have running, of course ☺
   • Joshua Judson Rosen (rozzin)'s status on Friday, 21-Sep-2012 02:57:45 EDT Joshua Judson Rosen

     • samatjain
     Right now, I've got 4 GB of my HDD in cache + ½ GB in buffer, 3 GB of live data in RAM, 50 MB of crap offloaded to swap, +½ GB totally free.
   • clacke (clacke)'s status on Friday, 21-Sep-2012 03:28:31 EDT clacke

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     • samatjain
     Try running #miro and experience a change in your experience. ;-)
   • samatjain (samatjain)'s status on Friday, 21-Sep-2012 17:41:05 EDT samatjain

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     • Joshua Judson Rosen
     @rozzin I guess it all comes down to the non-answer… "it depends"