[Info-vax] page and swap files

[R.A.Omond]

On 01/08/2011 21:33, Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote:
> In article<slrnj3bqb8.s1.BRAD at RABBIT.HSD1.MA.COMCAST.NET>,
> BRAD at RABBIT.HSD1.MA.COMCAST.NET () writes:
>
>> Any reason you want to keep the page/swap files on the system disk?
>
> As I mentioned, I just want minimal files there.  Maybe the minimum is
> zero.  It would be nice to have a bootable system disk which can boot
> without having to access any other disks, so presumably it would have to
> have some at least minimal page/swap files there.

Phillip, you seem to be getting unduly concerned about some things,
in particular your page/swap files.  As Bart later points out, your
system will boot quite happily with no page or swap files.  In fact,
(obviously) depending on how hard you run your systems and how much
physical memory they have, you might be surprised how long the system
can run without any page or swap files - I've seen a VAX 9000 run for
3 weeks like that ;-)

You might also be surprised (again, it depends ...) to see how many
systems never actually use the page or swap files.

$ analyse/system
SDA> clue memory/stat

Memory Management Statistics:
-----------------------------
Pagefaults:                    Non-Paged Pool:
Total Page Faults     1398941  Successful Expansions             4
Total Page Reads       647151  Unsuccessful Expansions           0
I/O's to read Pages    291360  Failed Pages Accumulator          0
Modified Pages Written      0  Total Alloc Requests           8528
I/O's to write Mod Pages    0  Failed Alloc Requests             0
Demand Zero Faults     623025
Global Valid Faults    182157  Paged Pool:
Modified Faults        231836  Total Failures                    0
Read Faults                 0  Failed Pages Accumulator          0
Execute Faults         160061  Total Alloc Requests          12338
                                Failed Alloc Requests             0

Here's just such a system that's been up for more than 33 days.
Note the "Modified Pages Written (0)" and "I/O's to write Mod Pages
(0)".  This system has never used the pagefile or swapfile.

Your mileage may of course vary.