Comment Re:But really, who cares? I care (Score 1) 544
Regarding:
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-->My strategy generally is to use a file for swap rather than a partition, even in linux.
What I find curious is that you have a strategy. On what relevant experience do you base this strategy? 1 GB of disk space costs less than $0.50. Set up 3 GB of VM if it makes you feel good. The latte you drink while you set it up costs more than the extra disk space!
So go for it!!! Who cares what you do? Heck, give yourself 10x the RAM and see if it actually makes any difference!!! (it won't)
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I have a strategy and I care. I have some 50+ rather individual servers to maintain including constant builds, upgrades, etc., etc. so even a small amount of additional administration overhead is significant (not the disk space which I agree isn't significant).
I prefer to use swap files rather than partitions on my Unix servers (Linux and FreeBSD almost entirely). For me the main difference is that I can have an initialization script (e.g. cfengine driven) set up and even "re-up" swap files automatically vs. setting up a swap partition at build time. My "kickstart" mechanisms aren't as carefree in terms of setting up and managing swap partitions. Since I can't recall the last time anything actually swapped on any of my servers (years ago and just before a crash anyway), I don't think swap makes much difference, so I optimize for the time I have to put into getting it into place - by dealing with it in an automated initialization script and keeping it out of the issues related to partitioning the disks.
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-->My strategy generally is to use a file for swap rather than a partition, even in linux.
What I find curious is that you have a strategy. On what relevant experience do you base this strategy? 1 GB of disk space costs less than $0.50. Set up 3 GB of VM if it makes you feel good. The latte you drink while you set it up costs more than the extra disk space!
So go for it!!! Who cares what you do? Heck, give yourself 10x the RAM and see if it actually makes any difference!!! (it won't)
_______________
I have a strategy and I care. I have some 50+ rather individual servers to maintain including constant builds, upgrades, etc., etc. so even a small amount of additional administration overhead is significant (not the disk space which I agree isn't significant).
I prefer to use swap files rather than partitions on my Unix servers (Linux and FreeBSD almost entirely). For me the main difference is that I can have an initialization script (e.g. cfengine driven) set up and even "re-up" swap files automatically vs. setting up a swap partition at build time. My "kickstart" mechanisms aren't as carefree in terms of setting up and managing swap partitions. Since I can't recall the last time anything actually swapped on any of my servers (years ago and just before a crash anyway), I don't think swap makes much difference, so I optimize for the time I have to put into getting it into place - by dealing with it in an automated initialization script and keeping it out of the issues related to partitioning the disks.
