swapd

What is it?

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 space; and (b) provide a limited amount of virtual memory.

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

Who made it?

The author of swapd is Neven Lovric <neven@lovric.net>.


Which license was it released under?

swapd was released under the GNU General Public License, version 2.


What's the latest version?

The latest version is 0.2 (May 21, 2000).
This is the CHANGELOG.


Where can I get it?

The official swapd archive is at ftp.linux.hr in /pub/swapd.

The enhanced Debian package is available at http://packages.debian.org/stable/admin/swapd.


Installation notes

If you choose to install a binary package, there are some things you should do:

- Take a look at /usr/local/etc/swapd.conf and change what is neccesary.
- It is highly recommended that you change MAX_SWAPFILES to 64 or more in /usr/src/linux/include/linux/swap.h and recompile the kernel. If you don't do this, swapd will not be able to allocate any more than 8 swap files, in which case there's not much point using it.
- Add /usr/local/sbin/swapd to, for instance, /etc/rc.d/rc.local to run swapd automaticly at startup.


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