Timeline for What problem does dphys-swapfile solve?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
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| Dec 11, 2019 at 8:29 | comment | added | jww | Thanks @Dougie. Yeah, I know I need a swapfile. After removing dphys-swapfile I manually added a partition with swapfile and set swappiness. I can run my compiler again :) | |
| Dec 10, 2019 at 22:09 | comment | added | Dougie | For some (unknown) reason the RPF folks don't ship Raspbian with a swap partition. They have dphys-swapfile enabled (albeit the file size used to be too small to be any use). I don't think the kernel cares whether the swap space is in a partition or in a file container in the root. The point I was trying to make was that having 1GB of RAM may mean swapping is unavoidable. @goldilocks | |
| Dec 10, 2019 at 20:34 | comment | added | goldilocks♦ |
@Dougie A swap file has to be explicitly invoked (via swapon filepath); this is part of what the dphys-swapfile service does. If you have disabled dphys because you are using a different form of swap (eg., a partition listed in /etc/fstab), the swap file will never be spontaneously used regardless of circumstances. Whether there's much point in deleting it depends on how big it is in relation to how much space you have; if you never plan to re-enable dphys then it's just clutter.
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| Dec 10, 2019 at 19:59 | comment | added | Dougie | It's only safe to remove the swapfile if you will never over commit RAM. Swapping (which is much better on a USB device) is there to free up RAM from dormant processes to allow a memory hungry process to run. That's the sort of thing that's 100% invisible on your Windows laptop with 8GB or 16GB of RAM. On a Raspberry with 1GB of RAM having a swap file may save you from an unscheduled reboot. | |
| Dec 10, 2019 at 17:45 | comment | added | jww | Thanks @godilocks. It looks like it is safe to remove dphys-swapfile. | |
| Dec 10, 2019 at 17:41 | vote | accept | jww | ||
| Dec 10, 2019 at 16:25 | history | edited | goldilocks♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 10, 2019 at 16:14 | history | edited | goldilocks♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 10, 2019 at 15:57 | history | edited | goldilocks♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 10, 2019 at 15:51 | history | answered | goldilocks♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |