[Cryptography] swap needed, or not

John Denker jsd at av8n.com
Wed Apr 23 15:41:27 EDT 2014


On 04/22/2014 12:55 PM, Tom Mitchell wrote
> Swap is still needed, the size is open to discussion.
> 
> The reason is the fork(); exec() pair.

Swap is not generally needed, not for that reason or 
any other.

Proof by construction:  There are LOTS of embedded 
systems that run just fine with no swap.  Been there,
done that.

Additional proof by construction:  This email is being
composed on a laptop with no swap.  Bog-standard Ubuntu 
Linux.  Bog-standard x86_64 hardware.

You can always create situations where swap is needed:
 -- Maybe you want to run big programs in a small amount
  of physical memory.
 -- Maybe you want your laptop to hibernate.

However ... there remain LOTS of practical situations 
where swap is not needed.

On 04/23/2014 09:31 AM, Peter Gutmann wrote:

>> That's obviously a Unix-specific thing, because Windows will run with zero
>> swap quite happily. 

It's not a Unix-specific thing.  It's not any kind of
thing at all.  Unix runs with zero swap quite happily.



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