SuSE 9.3, software RAID and swap partition
Hi List, I've got a box with 2 SATA drives configured through YaST during installation as a RAID1 mounted to / root which is working well. I'm still getting my head around the management tool mdadm but it's slowly coming together. I'm about to start testing this and wanted some information on the swap partition. It's not currently in a RAID partition and I read somewhere that it's not necessary to provide redundancy for the swap partition, but I was wondering if there is data in the swap partition and that physical drive fails, won't the box need it? SteveC
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Thursday 2005-09-01 at 21:28 +0100, Stephen Carter wrote:
I'm about to start testing this and wanted some information on the swap partition.
It's not currently in a RAID partition and I read somewhere that it's not necessary to provide redundancy for the swap partition, but I was wondering if there is data in the swap partition and that physical drive fails, won't the box need it?
If you define two different swap partitions with the same priority, the kernel will write to both, with some speed gain. However, if one fails, the system would likely crash (what was swapped out is spread amongst two (or more) partitions - you'd loose whatever was in memory, but data on disk "should" be safe. If you "raid" those swap partitions you loose speed (compared with the previous case) but gain reliability. You choose :-) This is discussed, I think, in the software raid howto, included in the distro dvd. - -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFDF7PytTMYHG2NR9URAmVKAJ9F7qXq86xLiv/J9io3ePGT2napQQCeKDfr s73+NahTcnvL1RTL1lbgP0E= =A6SK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
I throw this out wondering if anyone within the academic universe has had experience using Linux, as apposed to windows or macs, on workstations in labs or for public use. In an attempt to better educated students and make them more versatile, I am thinking about implementing some SuSE 9.3 computers as workstations for students to use. Currently the students only use XP, Microsoft Office, and until a few months ago, were only given IE as the browser. They now have options to choose between IE, FireFox, and Opera; I would like to give them the opportunity to also select from different OS's. Besides the initial support for 'how do you do this in Linux', what other problems or concerns, if any, have others faced? Have you had success implementing such or maybe why you chose not to? Thanks for any feedback. ------- Code Monkey (recently demoted from Super Code Monkey) Whoa whoa WHOA whoa whoa Whoa whoa whoa WHOA whoa whoa... this is not my Batman cup __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com
participants (3)
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Carlos E. R. -
Stephen Carter -
Super Code Monkey