[vox-tech] Software IDE Root RAID on Linux

[vox-tech@lists.lugod.org]

On Wed, Mar 13, 2002 at 05:11:31PM -0800, Jeff Newmiller wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, Bill Broadley wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 13, 2002 at 10:23:40AM -0800, Stephen M. Helms wrote:
> > > This makes perfect sense on a production machine, not needed in my
> > > case.  I will remember for further reference for sure.
> > > 
> > > Bill:  How do you handle swap partitions on this machine?
> > 
> > Normal swap partitions, as recommended, it makes sense since you don't
> > need the overhead of the raid layer and swap already will make use
> > of multiple disks for increased performance.
> 
> Not a RAID user, but this doesn't make sense to me.  If part of my swap
> goes south, how can my applications continue to run?  I think it depends
> on whether you require continuous reliable operation or are only willing
> to pay for safe data and nevermind a crash related to hardware failure.

  I agree, swap on raid should be a benefit to stability in drive failure 
cases.

  Any running applications that have pages swapped out to a failed drive
_will_ have to crash when they attempt to draw that page back in to 
memory for use.  I suspect they would probably receive a SIGSEGV,
(this would be fun to test).