Re: swap on RAID (was Re: swp - Re: ext3 journal on software raid)

[Mike Hardy <mhardy@h3c.com>]

Andy Smith wrote:

> I interpret your views as (a) but I interpret Mike's as "there are
> people who are saying that a correctly sized machine can have zero
> swap configured."
> 
> Having no swap configured and merely using no swap in normal
> circumstances are very very different situations.

You are correct that I was getting at the zero swap argument - and I 
agree that it is vastly different from simply not expecting it. It is 
important to know that there is no inherent need for swap in the kernel 
though - it is simply used as more "memory" (albeit slower, and with 
some optimizations to work better with real memory) and if you don't 
need it, you don't need it.

That said, I mentioned my servers run with swap for the same reason I 
run with raid. I don't plan on having a disk very often (if at all), and 
I don't plan on needing swap very often (if at all), but when it 
happens, I expect my machine to keep running. (or at least I hope it does)

-Mike