Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Hello!
I have installed FossaPup64 on the 32 Gb USB stick 3.0. The pendrive is formatted in Ext4.
On the pendrive only one Ext4 partition, no swap partition.

I clicked on the Desktop Installer icon, and choose option Installer (dosen't support Uefi) and then the option USB Flash Drive/SD Card.
Installation completed successfully.

I have some doubts.
can a Swap partition harm pendrives?

Hello,
how big is your ram?
If it is 4 gb or more the swap is not necessary IMO. This is true for "normal" use, not for very heavy tasks which consume a lot of ram.
Fossapup64 worked well for me with 4 gb ram without a swap (later I upgraded to 8 gb).

The swap partition on usb device will be relatively slow, but if there are situations that all ram would be consumed, even the slow swap can save the situation.

HI @goltrek You ask: can a Swap partition harm pendrives?
Answer: No known occurrences.

Also, as @Feek shows, you would want to have a swap that is recommended to be at the size of your system's RAM. I will go further to suggest, that you will want your swap to be on your system's motherboard drive vs a USB stick. Various good reasons for this including, most important to me, consistent timings.

Hope the info is helpful

Hi Feek

The computer has processor Sempron 3000 and 2 Gb memory.
Thanks!

Hi Clarity

Thanks for the explanations. I was in doubt if it could harm the pendrive.
With 2 Gb memory do you advise creating Swap?

Feek wrote: ↑Fri Sep 03, 2021 8:03 pm

Hello,
how big is your ram?
If it is 4 gb or more the swap is not necessary IMO. This is true for "normal" use, not for very heavy tasks which consume a lot of ram.
Fossapup64 worked well for me with 4 gb ram without a swap (later I upgraded to 8 gb).

The swap partition on usb device will be relatively slow, but if there are situations that all ram would be consumed, even the slow swap can save the situation.

@Feek :-

Under normal-use circumstances I would tend to agree with you. However, even that statement is subjective.

I have 32GB DDR4 here in the new HP desktop. However, I have nearly 60 GB of swap space, scattered around 3 drives totalling around 5 TB between them.

I do a LOT of video-processing these days - some of them quite large - and one contiguous 'chunk' of this is almost 40 GB in size. Reason for this is that I suspend quite frequently, and HP have this thing set-up so that even if there's only a couple of GB of data in the RAM, it insists on 'mirroring' the whole 32GB at one go when suspending. And I found out early on that it doesn't like dividing it up between multiple smaller swap areas; data invariably gets corrupted, and it won't 'wake up' properly.

So long as that 32GB can all be mirrored to the same location, everything's tickety-boo.

------------------------------

@goltrek :- Clarity's right in this.

10-12 years ago, I would NOT have advised creating swap on a flash drive, because NAND flash in those days was still quite sensitive to frequent write operations. Nowadays, the stuff's as resilient as the NAND used in SSDs.....far more robust, so flash devices have a much longer lifespan than they used to.

Mike.

My current advice is to put SWAP partition or file on your motherboard's drive and NOT on a USB.

The problem that I have found is that USB performance in a Linux I/O subsystem does NOT deliver the consistent performance that one gets from a device connected via the motherboard's bus. If you are using a VERY HIGH END USB device, then you might consider that an option. MOST all of us use low end USB. Those manufacturer's specs do not match the 'real' performance of the USBs (thru benchmarks) in what I have found over the past 2 years...except the costly high-end models I purchase.

So my recommendation is that if you have the space, put your SWAP on your drive connected to your motherboard.

I use SWAP partitions placed on the motherboard drive in every system I have. I do this to keep SWAP activity contained in a separate area on the drive away from the main data-system use on the drive.

Hope this is helpful

Just to see if a swap is really going to get used as you normally use the computer.

Try making a swap file on the USB.

In terminal:

pupswap

is program to make swap file.

Reboot so the swap is seen to be available for use.

You could choose to put the swap file on the internal drive.
But first mount the main large partition it has. (click on the desktop icon for it)
That will let pupswap program see it as a location to put the swap file.
Warning:
If Windows is on the internal drive.
Run Windows defrag program, to defrag the partition, before putting the pup swap file, on it.

At anytime you can check to see if swap is being used.
In a terminal:

free

That will show RAM usage.

Hi Mike and Clarity.

No hard drive or SSD on the computer, only pendrives.

Hi bigpup

Thanks for the program's tip to make Swap files.
On the computer no hard drive or SSD.

goltrek wrote: ↑Fri Sep 03, 2021 10:25 pm

With 2 Gb memory do you advise creating Swap?

You ask a grey question. 64 w/2gb RAM I would probably use a swap borne of necessity while seeking more RAM or in lieu an internal SSD or eMMC for a swap. I might consider the no copy pfix argument at boot.

The biggest ram pigs in my experience are browsers, and if you use Pale Moon with a single tab you can probably get away with 2gb in Fossa.

If I do it, it will be to suspend my machines, not performance. 666philb who releases your distro writes 2gb is the minimum: http://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?f=146&t=820

The final choice is subjective.

I use Fossapup64 9.5 on a 2GB RAM computer.
If you only try to do one program running at a time.
Limit the number of browser tabs you have open.
Keep in mind, that a lot of web sites, now seem to constantly want to run, pop up videos.
So do not let them do that.

I have no issues with 2GB RAM.

Thank everyone for the tips.
I will keep the pendrive without Swap.
I use few programs on Puppy, I will use one program at a time.
Despite being installed on the pendrive the performance is good.
Thanks!

Please be aware that using swap files or swap partitions on microSD cards or Flash drives should be discouraged. These devices usually run slower than regular hard drives and also have a limited amount of writes before they stop functioning properly. Swap files can make easily thousands of writes per day.

It is OK to boot Puppy Linux from microSD and Flash drives, since you are only writing Puppy Linux OS files once (usually).
Also Puppy Linux save files limit when writing to these devices takes place, prolonging their lives.

@snoring_cat
Thanks for the explanations.

Following the guidelines, will not create swap partition.
Greetings!

i have similar question

i installed Fossapup64 with Full Installer installed with the command

export ENABLE_FULLINSTALL=1
puppyinstaller

now the things i got 3.2 GB ram(3.2GB + 800MB for graphics something) and when the ram is fully used ... operating system just freezes and i have to reboot .

i have installed it in internal sata hard disk without any swap partition(and i dont want to create any more partition because i have already 4 partition on my hdd) and no swap file (as i dont know how to make one )

Amit Ranaware wrote: ↑Wed Sep 21, 2022 3:49 pm

i have similar question

i have installed it in internal sata hard disk without any swap partition(and i dont want to create any more partition because i have already 4 partition on my hdd) and no swap file (as i dont know how to make one )

Follow the steps I posted earlier for making a swap file.
viewtopic.php?p=36070#p36070

If you are filling up RAM, to the point of freezing the computer.
You are doing to much, at the same time.
Probably, too many programs, running at the same time.

Web browsers will eat RAM, if you let them.
Go into the browser preferences and disable stuff, that would normally run in the background, and auto do things.

I run with 2GB of RAM and have no issues.
But, I only run one program, at a time.

In the future, best if you make your own topic, about your question of issue.
It gets confusing, talking about two computer, in one topic.