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Re: 486-100/16mb. linux is slow



Ira Abramov wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 29 Sep 1996, Amos Shapira wrote:
> 
> > |I've heard there might be a slight performance penalty since this is a
> > |file and not a dedicated partition, but I haven't noticed it yet.
> >
> > There might be more than a slight performance hit since the blocks are
> > copied through the cache and the disk is accessed through the
> > filesystem.
> 
> ... and a swap file may not be created as a single stretch...

True indeed.

> best way, as far as I can see it, is have it on a separate disk, or at
> least the fastest in your system, and better do it at the end of the disk
> (last cylinders) since it is the fstest there.

I'm not sure how much this is better than spreading swap over all your
disks -
there must be a trade off between having one particularly fast disk
doing all the
swap work while others might be idle vs. sharing the filesystem and swap
load across all disks, which can access more then one block
simulatanously (but have
to move the heads away from the data partition for that).  This is way
RAID's
mirror mode adds a lot to read-access performance.

> 
> one thing I agree on, though: a swap file IS a must. even with my 48 megs,
> I have a 50 meg swap partition.

Especially that the original poster reported a 1Gb disk, as far as I
remember -
those extra tens of megs whoulc better be in the swap rather than unused
under
/usr or /

Cheers,

--Amos

PS - I'm back on the list, as you can see, so there is no need to send
me
     saparate copies.


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