Timeline for Should I disable swap file if I have lots of RAM or should I move it to a virtual RAM drive?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
22 events
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:22 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://askubuntu.com/ with https://askubuntu.com/
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| Mar 20, 2017 at 10:04 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/
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| Aug 5, 2016 at 18:39 | comment | added | Royi Namir | This question can be answered only by Same hardware , 2 computers (same config) - , one acronis image file , and run same programs and measuring time through time | |
| Jul 31, 2015 at 23:37 | comment | added | Jamie Hanrahan | Anecdotal evidence from a few users who have not posted anyhing like well-described experiments, let alone test results, is not particularly compelling. | |
| Feb 7, 2015 at 15:26 | comment | added | Twinbee | @DavidSchwartz: You may be putting the Microsoft devs on a pedestal. I know having the pagefile inside RAM makes no sense theoretically, but it turns out plenty have found that a performance increase is indeed witnessed. | |
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| Sep 12, 2014 at 15:49 | comment | added | David Schwartz | @Anaksunaman Yes, but this is the 100% typical use case. The notion that modern operating systems need VM tuning to handle 100% typical use cases is nonsense. | |
| Sep 12, 2014 at 15:48 | comment | added | David Schwartz | @ZanLynx I'm not saying it's never a good idea to disable swap if you have some kind of unusual use case. But there's nothing at all unusual about the OP's use case. "There once existed some reason it made sense to tweak this knob" does not mean "you should tweak this knob". | |
| Sep 12, 2014 at 5:49 | comment | added | Anaksunaman | The assumption that a given algorithm will always make a desirable decision for the user is flat-out untrue. They make decisions based on a set parameters the programmers have decided are important. This might well be at direct odds with what a user needs to have happen. | |
| Sep 12, 2014 at 1:15 | comment | added | Zan Lynx | I agree that disabling swap can be a good idea. Anyone who's used Linux and had Evolution email run away with 3.5 GB of RAM would rather have Evo die than sit and wait for the laptop to stop swapping. | |
| Sep 11, 2014 at 16:27 | comment | added | David Schwartz | @smc There's nothing unusual about the OP's use case. The notion that operating systems are not properly tuned for bog standard use cases is complete nonsense. (See my answer for more on why you don't want to do this.) | |
| Sep 11, 2014 at 16:00 | comment | added | Art Gertner | @DavidSchwartz, I don't see how the fact that people who developed memory management algorithms are smart, makes any difference to original subject. OP has asked whether disabling swapping can improve performance and I have explained that it can, under certain conditions and can lead to problems under other conditions. Answering your question of why (?) - I can say, because algorithms are not perfect and it is up for the user to fine tune them. This is why there is a swappiness parameter in Linux and this is why disabling swapping is at all possible. | |
| Sep 11, 2014 at 15:38 | comment | added | David Schwartz | This answer is incorrect and contains lots of misinformation. But the simple way to see why it's wrong is this -- the people who designed your operating system's memory behavior are probably some of the smartest people in the world. Why would they design a system such that giving it more options (the option to swap if, and only if, it thinks that's best) would make its performance worse? Only an idiot would design a system like that. | |
| Sep 11, 2014 at 13:19 | comment | added | TylerH | @ChrisH You also probably wouldn't be able to load a sql database into a word processor, since those run entirely in RAM :-) | |
| Sep 11, 2014 at 12:51 | comment | added | Chris H | It would be stretching a point to call me even a casual gamer, but even so my desktop is rather different 4GB RAM + swap on a dedicated HDD (but swappiness adjusted). I had originally planned to put a rarely-used swap partition on the netbook's SD card (an 8GB SD card costs peanuts compared to an SSD) but there were driver issues. | |
| Sep 11, 2014 at 12:43 | comment | added | Art Gertner | @ChrisH, valid point. This proves that amount of RAM highly depends on user requirements. For someone 2 GB will do just fine, someone will need 64GB. (I personally run my system with 3GB RAM and no swap and never had any problems) | |
| Sep 11, 2014 at 12:37 | comment | added | Chris H | "One thing to consider (and you mentioned it already) - you need to have enough RAM to accommodate all the programs you are executing" just to give an example of this: my netbook has only 2GB and swap disabled (linux, but that doesn't matter too much). The only thing I can't do at all is video editing. | |
| Sep 11, 2014 at 9:48 | history | edited | Art Gertner | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Sep 11, 2014 at 9:17 | history | edited | Art Gertner | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Sep 11, 2014 at 8:55 | history | answered | Art Gertner | CC BY-SA 3.0 |