5 ms·

Strongly suggest you try doing that on a VPS, then report back

ahepp 1y ago
What do you think is going to happen? I tested it out on an ec2 instance just now and it seems to have worked as one would expect.
- awesome_dude 1y ago
  EC2 != VPS
  - cmpxchg8b 1y ago
    They both offer virtualized guests under a hypervisor host. EC2 does have more offload specialization hardware but for the most part they are functionally equivalent, unless I'm missing something...
  - ahepp 1y ago
    What VPS do you think this would cause problems on? Why?
- Zekio 1y ago
  well once you "need" that swap, it will be writing pages across the network due to the storage being external to the physical server, so the latency is terrible
  - kassner 1y ago
    Put swap on the “instance store” disk, not EBS.
  - ahepp 1y ago
    Latency of swap is always terrible in comparison to RAM. RAM vs disk is already something ~1000x right? I've never characterized EBS vs trad ssd, but I would be surprised if it's more than 10x. I don't think using swap as "emergency RAM" makes a lot of sense in 2025. The arguments in favor of swap which I find convincing are about allowing the system to evict low use pages which otherwise would not be evictable.
justsomehnguy 1y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45007821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45007821 And that was like... two years ago? 1GB of RAM and actually ~700MB usable before I found the proper magik incantations to really disable kdump. Also have used 1GB machines for literally years. Strongly suggest you shouldn't strongly suggest.
- awesome_dude 1y ago
  Uh.. your link... doesn't show how a VPS can have SWAP enabled You do understand what's being discussed... right?
  - justsomehnguy 1y ago
    Literally up the chain: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45663111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45663111 Or you have a very peculiar understanding what 'VPS' means.
    - awesome_dude 1y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_server As I said earlier https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=awesome_dude#45663117 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=awesome_dude#4566311...
      - justsomehnguy 1y ago
        Hello, it's the year 2025 here. If you use OpenVZ-like ancient shit - it's on you. So no, VPS is a proper virtualization for a 15 years. And with a proper virtualization you have the full control.

What do you think is going to happen? I tested it out on an ec2 instance just now and it seems to have worked as one would expect.

awesome_dude 1y ago
EC2 != VPS
- cmpxchg8b 1y ago
  They both offer virtualized guests under a hypervisor host. EC2 does have more offload specialization hardware but for the most part they are functionally equivalent, unless I'm missing something...
- ahepp 1y ago
  What VPS do you think this would cause problems on? Why?
Zekio 1y ago
well once you "need" that swap, it will be writing pages across the network due to the storage being external to the physical server, so the latency is terrible
- kassner 1y ago
  Put swap on the “instance store” disk, not EBS.
- ahepp 1y ago
  Latency of swap is always terrible in comparison to RAM. RAM vs disk is already something ~1000x right? I've never characterized EBS vs trad ssd, but I would be surprised if it's more than 10x. I don't think using swap as "emergency RAM" makes a lot of sense in 2025. The arguments in favor of swap which I find convincing are about allowing the system to evict low use pages which otherwise would not be evictable.

justsomehnguy 1y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45007821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45007821 And that was like... two years ago? 1GB of RAM and actually ~700MB usable before I found the proper magik incantations to really disable kdump. Also have used 1GB machines for literally years. Strongly suggest you shouldn't strongly suggest.

awesome_dude 1y ago
Uh.. your link... doesn't show how a VPS can have SWAP enabled You do understand what's being discussed... right?
- justsomehnguy 1y ago
  Literally up the chain: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45663111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45663111 Or you have a very peculiar understanding what 'VPS' means.
  - awesome_dude 1y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_server As I said earlier https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=awesome_dude#45663117 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=awesome_dude#4566311...
    - justsomehnguy 1y ago
      Hello, it's the year 2025 here. If you use OpenVZ-like ancient shit - it's on you. So no, VPS is a proper virtualization for a 15 years. And with a proper virtualization you have the full control.