[oi-dev] Change Request: Lowering dump and swap defaults AKA My dump is too big!

[Deano]

Hello,

Currently we have bug 1024 which relates to an install blocker due to the
way the installer defaults swap and dump sizes.

The relevant parts are in
slim_source/usr/src/lib/install_target/controller.py

Line 626 in the function calc_swap_dump_size

The table explains that above 1GB swap defaults to half memory size, maxed
to 32GB and dump above 0.5GB is half memory size, maxed to 16GB

 

So a machine with 32GB or more will have 16GB dump space and 16GB-32GB swap
space, which is quite nasty when many of us are now using SSD as boot
drives.

 

First question, why huge space for dump files anyway? How many people use
that facility?

Second do we really use half memory for swap with large memory configs?

 

I suggest that we limit dump space to a small fraction, say 256MB (its
minimum according to that function) and cap swap space by default to say 4
or 8 GB. This would seem to be more reasonable defaults to me, and both can
be increased if required by a particular user.


With a swap default maximum of 8GB, this would reduce our minimal install
size from roughly 4GB + 0.8 * RAM to roughly a max of 13 GB.

In real figures, a server with 48GB RAM would require 13 GB of boot drive
space versus the current 44 GB

 

Thoughts?

Deano

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