[ILUG] Thoughts on USB as swap space

[Frank Murphy]

On 02/01/2008, Pádraig Brady <P at draigbrady.com> wrote:
>
> Ruairi Hickey wrote:
> > On Wednesday 02 January 2008 10:15:08 Pádraig Brady wrote:
> >> Niall O Broin wrote:
> >>> How much swap is needed is an easy calculation:
> >>>
> >>> swap space = required memory space - physical memory
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> The tricky part is figuring out the value of "required memory space"
> :-)
> >>>
> >>> on a machine with 4GB of RAM, for desktop use, you probably hardly
> need
> >>> any swap, but I'd give it 1GB just to have some.
> >
> > If the machine is going to suspend to disk, which uses swap as a store,
> your
> > swap size needs to be at least = ram size (prob. +some also)...
>
> True. I never use suspend to disk though because disks are so slow.
> This is another situation where SSDs will help.
>
>
As an experiment put a p3 together with a 1gb usb pen.
heres what dmesg gives me: <snip>
Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.
usb-storage: device found at 2
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
usb-storage: device scan complete
scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access     SanDisk  Cruzer Micro     6.51 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
CCS
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] 2025471 512-byte hardware sectors (1037 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 45 00 00 08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] 2025471 512-byte hardware sectors (1037 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 45 00 00 08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
 sdc: sdc1
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk

It may die, but it's just a cheap Argos job.


Frank