Operating Systems > Linux and UNIX
PRO-PROJECT CONTINUED
voidmain:
I don't want to screw up what you guys are working on and I admit I've only been browsing bits of the thread so if I say anything that makes you go "huh?!?", just ignore me. I'm not exactly sure what you are up to but in most any situation it is also good to carefully consider your swap. Now I just noticed you are using two drives. Generally, you want to set your swap up with performance in mind. If you have multiple equal drives you would want to set swap partitions up on each drive.
The Linux kernel will manage the swap in such a way that you will get increased performance spreading across multiple drives. Now, if the drives are not of equal performance I am not sure of the benefit. You may be better off just putting swap on the fastest drive (you can use the "hdparm" command to test the drive throughputs). If you set the same priority on more than one swap partition the kernel will "stripe" your swap and you should see increased swap performance.
Obviously the best performance is achieved by having enough RAM so that paging never occurs but you already knew that. There are documents out there that describe how spreading your swap increases swap performance, and extra swap parameters you can use in your fstab for multiple swap devices. For instance, search for the word "swap" in this doc.
http://linas.org/linux/Software-RAID/Software-RAID-8.html
[ September 09, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]
creedon:
quote:Originally posted by void main:
I don't want to screw up what you guys are working on and I admit I've only been browsing bits of the thread so if I say anything that makes you go "huh?!?", just ignore me. I'm not exactly sure what you are up to but in most any situation it is also good to carefully consider your swap. Now I just noticed you are using two drives. Generally, you want to set your swap up with performance in mind. If you have multiple equal drives you would want to set swap partitions up on each drive.
The Linux kernel will manage the swap in such a way that you will get increased performance spreading across multiple drives. Now, if the drives are not of equal performance I am not sure of the benefit. You may be better off just putting swap on the fastest drive (you can use the "hdparm" command to test the drive throughputs). If you set the same priority on more than one swap partition the kernel will "stripe" your swap and you should see increased swap performance.
Obviously the best performance is achieved by having enough RAM so that paging never occurs but you already knew that. There are documents out there that describe how spreading your swap increases swap performance, and extra swap parameters you can use in your fstab for multiple swap devices. For instance, search for the word "swap" in this doc.
http://linas.org/linux/Software-RAID/Software-RAID-8.html
[ September 09, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]
--- End quote ---
The sticking point is that the 2nd HD is going to be running Windows apps under WINE, at least that's my understanding of things. That may or maynot work; I'm not proficent enough to even make a good guess, but having run WINE, I DO know it's a RAM hog.
Master of Reality:
i dont think there would be enough space for two swap partitions... unless there was two 64MB swaps
voidmain:
A 64MB swap partition on each drive would be better than a single 128MB swap partition on one drive. That is, as long as the drives are of equal speed and as long as they are given the same priority in the /etc/fstab.
Sleeping Dog:
WHERE WE ARE RIGHT NOW
The drives are a 1.0 Gig Seagate and a 1.2 Gig Western Digital of the same speed. (hda and hdb respectively.) It was decided earlier that LINUX could have all of hda and some of hdb.
Both Windows apps (that we will be trying to run under Linux) require some dedicated HD space of their own. PhotoShop uses something called "Scratch Disks" that are basically folders to which temporary files are written. AutoCad uses a "Page File" as well as requiring a designated folder for its "autosave" function. The sizes of these "folders" can vary depending on the size of the graphic image or drawing that is being worked on. Due to their both being Windows apps, they require these cashing areas to be in a DOS type format. We can set up both apps to cashe to the same place. (i.e. a folder called something like D:\cashe) Thus, the apps will share the spot where their temporary files are stored. This area should be part of the same partition where the apps live.
The PhotoShop app is about 100 MB in size. (not including cashe space needed)
The AutoCad app is about 320 MB in size. (not including cashe space needed)
If we make the cashe area for the apps 180 MB in size, that would make the Windows partition on the second HD 600 total MB in size, or about half of that drive. The rest of hdb could be used for the LINUX OS or additional Linux apps.
IN SUMMARY:
Between the two HD's we have 1.0 Gig on hda and 0.6 Gig on hdb that can be devoted to LINUX.
Have you reached a consensus on how to partition hda for the OS?
Sleeping Dog
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