Add more temporary or swap space without repartitioning.

When you install any operating system, it's important to allocate sufficient disk space to hold temporary and swap files. Ideally, you already know the optimum sizes for your system so you can partition your disk accordingly during the install. However, if your needs change or you wish to optimize your initial choices, your solution doesn't have to be as drastic as a repartitionand-- reinstall--of the system.

man tuning has some practical advice for guesstimating the appropriate size of swap and your other partitions.

Clearing /tmp

Unless you specifically chose otherwise when you partitioned your disk, the installer created a /tmp filesystem for you:

  % grep tmp /etc/fstab
  /dev/ad0s1e   /tmp  ufs  rw  2  2 
  % df -h /tmp

Filesystem	Size	Used	Avil	Capacity	Mounted on
/dev/ad0s1e	252M	614K	231M	0%	/tmp

Here I searched /etc/fsta b for the /tmp filesystem. This particular filesystem is 256 MB in size. Only a small portion contains temporary files.

It's always a good idea to clean out /tmp periodically so it doesn't overflow with temporary files. Consider taking advantage of the built-in periodic script /etc/periodic/daily/110.clean-tmps [Hack #20].

You can also clean out /tmp when the system reboots by adding this line to /etc/rc.conf:

  clear_tmp_enable="YES"

Moving /tmp to RAM

Another option is to move /tmp off of your hard disk and into RAM. This has the built-in advantage of automatically clearing the filesystem when you reboot, since the contents of RAM are volatile. It also offers a performance boost, since RAM access time is much faster than disk access time.

Before moving /tmp, ensure you have enough RAM to support your desired /tmp size. This command will show the amount of installed RAM:

  % dmesg | grep memory
  real memory  = 335462400 (319 MB)
  avail memory = 320864256 (306 MB)

Also check that your kernel configuration file contains device md (or mem ory disk). The GENERIC kernel does; if you've customized your kernel, double-check that you still have md support:

  % grep -w md /usr/src/sys/ i386/conf/CUSTOM
  device         md     # Memory "disks"

Changing the /tm p line in /etc/fstab as follows will mount a 64 MB /tmp in RAM:

  md /tmp mfs rw,-s64m 2 0

Next, unmount /tmp (which is currently mounted on your hard drive) and remount it using the new entry in /etc/fstab:

  # umount /tmp
  # mount /tmp
  # df -h /tmp

Filesystem	Size	Used	Avail	Capacity	Mounted on
/dev/md0	63M	8.OK	58M	0%	/tmp

Notice that the filesystem is now md0 , the first memory disk, instead of ad0s1e , a partition on the first IDE hard drive.

Creating a Swap File on Disk

Swap is different than /tmp. It's not a storage area for temporary files; instead, it is an area where the filesystem swap s data between RAM and disk. A sufficient swap size can greatly increase the performance of your filesystem. Also, if your system contains multiple drives, this swapping process will be much more efficient if each drive has its own swap partition.

The initial install created a swap filesystem for you:

  % grep swap /etc/fstab
  /dev/ad0s1b     none   swap   sw  0   0
  % swapinfo

Device	1K-blocks	Used	Avail	Capacity	Type
/dev/ad0s1b	639688	68	639620	0%	Interleaved

Note that the swapinfo command displays the size of your swap files. If you prefer to see that output in MB, try the swapctl command with the -lh flags (which make the listing more human):

  % swapctl -lh
  Device:      1048576-blocks Used:   
  /dev/ad0s1b         624     0

To add a swap area, first determine which area of disk space to use. For example, you may want to place a 128 MB swapfile on /usr. You'll first need to use dd to create this as a file full of null (or zero) bytes. Here I'll create a 128 MB swapfile as /usr/swap0:

  # dd if=/dev/zero of=/usr/swap0 bs=1024k count=128
  128+0 records in
  128+0 records out
  134217728 bytes transferred in 4.405036 secs (30469156 bytes/sec)

Next, change the permissions on this file. Remember, you don't want users storing data here; this file is for the filesystem:

  # chmod 600 /usr/swap0

Since this is really a file on an existing filesystem, you can't mount your swapfile in /etc/fstab. However, you can tell the system to find it at boot time by adding this line to /etc/rc.conf:

  swapfile="/usr/swap0"

To start using the swapfile now without having to reboot the system, use mdconfig :

  # mdconfig -a -t vnode -f /usr/swap0 -u 1 && swapon /dev/md1

The -a flag attaches the memory disk. -t vnode marks that the type of swap is a file, not a filesystem. The -f flag sets the name of that file: /usr/swap0.

The unit number -u 1 must match the name of the memory disk /dev/md1. Since this system already has /tm p mounted on /dev/md0, I chose to mount swap on /dev/md1. && swapon tells the system to enable that swap device, but only if the mdconfig command succeeded.

swapctl should now show the new swap partition:

  % swapctl -lh
   Device:        1048576-blocks   Used:
  /dev/ad0s1b           624       0
  /dev/md1              128       0

Monitoring Swap Changes

Whenever you make changes to swap or are considering increasing swap, use systat to monitor how your swapfiles are being used in real time:

  % systat -swap

The output will show the names of your swap areas and how much of each is currently in use. It will also include a visual indicating what percentage of swap contains data.

OpenBSD Differences

You can make this hack work on OpenBSD, as long as you remember that the RAM disk device is rd and its configuration tool is rdconfig . Read the relevant manpages, and you'll be hacking away.

See Also

• man tuning ( practical advice on /tmp and swap)
  
• man md
  
• man mdconfig
  
• man swapinfo
  
• man swapctl
  
• man systat
  
• The BSD Handbook entry on adding swap (http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_ US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/adding-swap-space.html)