03-28-2012
It doesn't make swap necessary. Virtual memory makes swap possible because the OS can leave triggers for itself when certain memory is used, i.e. automatically pausing a process and sending a request to the OS when the process attempts to access a swapped-out page. The ability to flag and reorder memory as you please makes other things possible too, like read-only memory, shared memory, and mapped files...
Whether swap is necessary and how much depends on the UNIX. The behavior when the system runs out of memory also depends on the UNIX.
I don't agree that no swap is advisable. Swap is your safety buffer. And depending on how you configure it, may not be that slow either. If you put it on the same spindle as your applications it'll naturally be slow...
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LEARN ABOUT HPUX
swapmem_on
swapmem_on(5) OBSOLETE swapmem_on(5)
NAME
swapmem_on - OBSOLETE kernel tunable parameter
DESCRIPTION
The tunable is obsolete. Processes will always be allowed to use pseudo-swap space if it is available.
In previous versions of HP-UX, system configuration required sufficient physical swap space for the maximum possible number of processes on
the system. This is because HP-UX reserves swap space for a process when it is created, to ensure that a running process never needs to be
killed due to insufficient swap.
This was difficult, however, for systems needing gigabytes of swap space with gigabytes of physical memory, and those with workloads where
the entire load would always be in core. This tunable was created to allow system swap space to be less than core memory. To accomplish
this, a portion of physical memory is set aside as "pseudo-swap" space. While actual swap space is still available, processes still
reserve all the swap they will need at fork or execute time from the physical device or file system swap. Once this swap is completely
used, new processes do not reserve swap, and each page which would have been swapped to the physical device or file system is instead
locked in memory and counted as part of the pseudo-swap space.
WARNINGS
Installation of optional kernel software, from HP or other vendors, may cause changes to tunable parameter values. After installation,
some tunable parameters may no longer be at the default or recommended values. For information about the effects of installation on tun-
able values, consult the documentation for the kernel software being installed. For information about optional kernel software that was
factory installed on your system, see at
AUTHOR
was developed by HP.
Tunable Kernel Parameters swapmem_on(5)