swapd - dynamic swapping manager for Linux

swapd

Dynamic Swapping Manager for Linux

Description

swapd is a dynamic swapping manager for Linux. It provides the system with as much swap space (virtual memory) as is required at a particular time by dynamicly creating swap files. This is more convinient than using fixed swapfiles and/or partitions because they (a) are unused most of the time and are just taking up disk spacec; and (b) provide a limited amount of virtual memory.

This comment from Gabor Z. Papp from 2000 UTC is a good example of swapd can do:

With 128MB memory my server totally freezed 4 times after 3-4 minutes. Just starting some memory hog application, and its over. With swapd works fine. :)

OpenPGP public keys

Neven Lovrić

[GnuPG binary | ASCII-armoured] 2012-04-11 OpenPGP public key (7777 B191 5933 ACF1 B998 0101 70B9 7690 C7F8 DD31).
[GnuPG binary | ASCII-armoured] Latest OpenPGP public key (must be signed with the 2012-04-11 key).

Download

Original Versions

The official swapd archive is located at ftp://ftp.linux.hr/swapd/.

The latest version is 0.2:

Source code: swapd-0.2.tar.gz (detached OpenPGP signature).
Binaries: Not available.

Enhanced Versions by the Debian Team

These enhanced versions are maintained by Airarius Mahinovs <aigarius@debian.org> and the Debian QA Group <packags@qa.debian.org>.

The latest version is 0.2-10.

Source packages: If you fine them on the Debian site, e-mail me.
Binary packages for Alpha, AMD64, ARM, HP/PA, i386, IA-64, m68k, MIPS, MIPSel, PowerPC, S/390, and SPARC: Debian Archive.

Enhanced Further Versions by the Ubuntu Team

The latest version is 0.2-11.

Source code packages: Ubuntu site.
Binary packages: Ubuntu site.

Installation Notes

Compilation

swapd - tested with 0.2-11 - will not compile with recent kernels unless you remove or comment out the following line from swapd.c:

#include <asm/page.h>

Configuration

...

Future Devellopment

Status on May 8, 2012 UTC.

swapd-0.3

This release will mostly just make it work on present-day Linux systems and is half-done, but I have rare Internet connectivity right now, so I can't finish it for a while.

dswapd-1.0 and dswapd-kernel-1.0

This release will rename "swapd - dynamic swapping manager for Linux" to "dswapd - dynamic swapping daemon", according to my decision from 2001.

It will be a complete rewrite of swapd and will use my Memory Allocation Vector (MAV) technology which will do everything automatically and exponentially more efficiently - there will be nothing you need to configure unless you want to use custom dswap directories. Also, it will hook into the kernel for increased performance.

The devellopment of this released has also been stalled by rare Internet connectivity.

Contribute

Statistics

If you have access to a heavy-load Linux system or are running memory-hungry simulations, download and run Memory Statistics 1.1 (detached OpenPGP signature). Make sure the system has the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) installed. It will gather memory use statistics at 1-seconds intervals, encrypt them on the 1^st of every month at 00:00:00 using Memory Statistics' 2012-09-26 OpenPGP public key, and e-mail them to me. If possible, try to annoy some script kiddies to have them DDoS the system so that I can see what that looks like, memory-wise.

Testing

If you're the administrator of a heavy-load Linux system and are willing to test releases of swapd / dswapd, e-mail me. Note that you will, most likely, have to recompile the kernel each time a new version of dswapd-kernel (kernel hooks) is released.

Bitcoins

You can always send Bitcoins to 1MSYtTApaELwPbf6vnLUspXavg8g9riAmi - the projects' Bitcoin address - to financially support the project.