Re: To Swap, or not to Swap

On 3/30/23 16:47, Jared Still wrote:
> Hi Mladen,
>
> As mentioned in my original post, yes, it is Linux.
>
> I have no direct experience with the client system, that comes from a
> colleague.
>
> To sum it up, there seems to be no reason to continue to allocate swap
> on modern Linux systems, as it really serves no good purpose.
>
Actually, as Kyle noted, swap makes for easier monitoring. It also gives you time to detect the problem. Being traditional, I wouldn't ever create a server without swap. Unix (and consequently Linux) was born when I was 9 years of age and it's not a new OS. There are many things missing from Linux: only 8 bits for status code and no lock manager are the first two things that come to mind. Linux is conceived as a 1970 OS. Ken Thompson, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie would be right at home with Linux, along with some snarly students from Helsinki. And that means that swap is necessary at some level. Maybe when Plan 9, the OS that Ken Thompson was working on after Unix, becomes ubiquitous, swap will not be a thing, but for now, I wouldn't leave my DB server without it. I think that Linux still has a long life ahead. People are having problems with the adoption of micro-kernel operating systems, like Mach, Hurd or OSF.  The only micro-kernel variant of Unix that is widely adopted is OS X and is mostly used for running Tiktok. To my knowledge, OS X doesn't have swap partition.

I am not sure that we are ready for a major step like getting rid of swap. Getting rid of genders is one thing but getting rid of swap partition is something entirely different.

-- 
Mladen Gogala
Database Consultant
Tel: (347) 321-1217
https://dbwhisperer.wordpress.com

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