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  • Swapping like gangbusters!

    From Chris Ahlstrom@OFeem1987@teleworm.us to comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.linux.misc on Thu Nov 7 09:28:10 2024
    From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

    So occasionally kswapd will start going whole hog. In combination with Chromium running and a make -j N job running, the system would slow wayyyyyy down,
    with kswapd trying to find a swap partition that did not exist (my bad!).

    There's a daemon called swapspace in the Debian repository. But I decided to try making a swapfile first. Here are the steps ("#" indicates a root prompt or the use of sudo):

    # fallocate -l 4G /swapfile [or see the "dd" command below]
    # chmod 600 /swapfile
    # mkswap /swapfile
    # swapon /swapfile
    # vi /etc/fstab, and add:

    /swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0 [to make the change permanent at boot]

    # swapon --show [to verify]

    Alternate command:

    # dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=4194304

    Imma go with this for awhile and see how it goes. If you try it, don't blame me if it fscks up your system :-D
    --
    The most important early product on the way to developing a good product
    is an imperfect version.
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  • From vallor@vallor@cultnix.org to comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.linux.misc on Thu Nov 7 15:06:28 2024
    From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

    On Thu, 7 Nov 2024 09:28:10 -0500, Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us>
    wrote in <vgiips$2mgad$2@dont-email.me>:

    So occasionally kswapd will start going whole hog. In combination with Chromium running and a make -j N job running, the system would slow
    wayyyyyy down,
    with kswapd trying to find a swap partition that did not exist (my
    bad!).

    There's a daemon called swapspace in the Debian repository. But I
    decided to try making a swapfile first. Here are the steps ("#"
    indicates a root prompt or the use of sudo):

    # fallocate -l 4G /swapfile [or see the "dd" command below]
    # chmod 600 /swapfile # mkswap /swapfile # swapon /swapfile # vi
    /etc/fstab, and add:

    /swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0 [to make the change permanent at
    boot]

    # swapon --show [to verify]

    Alternate command:

    # dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=4194304

    Imma go with this for awhile and see how it goes. If you try it, don't
    blame me if it fscks up your system :-D

    Thanks for the heads-up about fallocate(1).

    If creating a large file for (say) a virtual host, you might want
    to consider truncate(1), which builds a sparse file.
    --
    -v System76 Thelio Mega v1.1 x86_64 NVIDIA RTX 3090 Ti
    OS: Linux 6.11.6 Release: Mint 21.3 Mem: 258G
    "If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own."
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