On Thu, 13 May 2004 01:40:11 -0700, Brian Graversen wrote:
> /var/log/messages states that the swap is added without problems (the
> only strange this is that the priority keeps dropping by one, each
> time I re-add the swap).
>
> May 13 10:38:50 Jupiter kernel: Adding 473876k swap on /dev/hda5.
> Priority:-4 extents:1

This is not strange, it is normal. It's a feature of some sort. I
suppose the theory is that a user would want to specify swap devices in
the order in which s/he would want them to be used.

In practice, however, one should always specify priorities in fstab(5)
(or at the swapon(8) command line.) Generally you'll want partitions on
different physical disks to have the same priority. This might improve
swap performance somewhat, by spreading out the burden of the disk I/O
to different devices, even to different busses. (Whether or not that
translates into a noticeable improvement is doubtful. Heavy swap usage
is bad in any case. The best possible swap management does not compare
to the slowest imaginable RAM usage.
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