swap file vs. swap partition

[Peter Arremann]

On Saturday 30 July 2005 17:49, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> I'm certainly not the guy with good luck in general...
> I plan on using space from my /home partion, which is on /dev/hda2. So
> I will not be tampering with the root file system. In your opinion,
> does this sound safe?
In your case (all space already allocated) I would simply go with a swap file. 
It is safer and makes more sense. If you gain 2% performance on jobs that 
swap a lot it would take a long time to make up for the 8 hours you spend 
reloading and reconfiguring a system if you make a mistake :-) 


> Also, since this is hda2 and not hda1, the swap partion will wind up
> in the middle or outside edge of the disk, no? That is the 'bad' place
> to put it according to other posters in this thread. Or am I looking
> at it backwards?
You're right, but I guess I overstated the performance gains you will have. I 
never meant to say this will double the performance of your box or anything 
like that. Just if you are loading your box from scratch you would be silly 
to ignore the benefits you can get with simple changes like placing the swap 
right after /boot. 
Once your box is loaded, moving things around wouldn't be worth it.

Peter.