Wednesday 2 November 2016

Re: partman, recipes, sizing, swap, and all the things

On Wed, Nov 02, 2016 at 06:26:07PM +0000, Dimitri John Ledkov wrote:
> = Questions =
>
> Is it sensible to change the semantics of the % specification in partman-auto?
> Or should e.g. a brand new factor be introduced?
> Is the introduction of pre-seedable swaplimit sensible?
> Is 2GB a good generic upper swaplimit?
> Is hardcoded 2 * 2.5% of disk space a sensible dynamic limit, or
> should that be preseedable as well?

This proposal feels a little complicated to me. We discussed swap at the
Athens sprint and I wrote down what I remembered from the discussion:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/debian-installer/+bug/1566129/comments/3

In short:
- Use swap files
- Perhaps in a directory, so someone can just dd a new file alongside
existing ones for additional swap space if locally required
- One gigabyte is very useful and not too painful

Obviously cloud guests with e.g. 10 gig roots can probably not afford
an entire gigabyte for swap, so scaling down in this case may still
be useful.

Thanks