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Swap space and its management. What is Swap Space.
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What is Swap Space • Linux divides its physical RAM (random access memory) into chucks of memory called pages. Swapping is the process whereby a page of memory is copied to the preconfigured space on the hard disk, called swap space, to free up that page of memory.
Importance • when the system requires more memory than physically available, the kernel swaps out less used pages and gives memory to the current application (process) that needs the memory immediately. • a significant number of the pages used by an application during its startup phase may only be used for initialization and then never used again. The system can swap out those pages and free the memory for other applications
Drawbacks • Compared to memory, disks are very slow. Memory speeds can be measured in nanoseconds, while disks are measured in milliseconds, so accessing the disk can be tens of thousands times slower than accessing physical memory.
Drawbacks • Sometimes excessive swapping or thrashing occurs where a page is swapped out and then very soon swapped in and then swapped out again and so on. In such situations the system is struggling to find free memory and keep applications running at the same time. In this case only adding more RAM will help.
Types of Swap Space • Swap Partition • Swap File
What is Shared Memory • Shared memory (SHM) is another method of interposes communication (IPC) whereby 2 or more processes share a single chunk of memory to communicate. The shared memory system can also be used to set permissions on memory, allowing for things like malloc debuggers to be written.
Linux Users • Root (Admin) • Regular User • Service
Root User • The Linux administrative root account is automatically created when you install Linux, and it has administrative privileges for all services on Linux Operating System. The root account is also known as super user
Regular User • Regular users have the necessary privileges to perform standard tasks on a Linux computer such as running word processors, databases, and Web browsers. They can store files in their own home directories. Since regular users do not normally have administrative privileges, they cannot accidentally delete critical operating system configuration files.
Service User • Services such as Apache, Squid, mail, games, and printing have their own individual service accounts. These accounts exist to allow each of these services to interact with your computer.
User Group • A user group is a group of one or more users. A user can be a member of more than one group. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux, when a user is added, a private user group (primary group) is created—meaning that a user group of the same name is created and that the new user is the sole user in that group.