Q: Should I have swap?

[Jack Wasey]

Daniel Carrera wrote:
> Jack Wasey wrote:
>> Daniel Carrera wrote:
>>> Jails look interesting. I just have one question (I hope someone can 
>>> answer): If I have 10 clients running Gnome+OpenOffice+Firefox will 
>>> the RAM in the server have 10 redundant copies of those applications?
>>
>> No, that's what your server's swap is for. (Also see swap over network 
>> for LTSP. Alternative or complementary?)
> 
> I don't really understand what you are trying to say. I'm concerned that 
> if I use jails there will be multiple redundant copies of common 
> programs like Gnome, all stored in virtual memory. So the virtual memory 
> requirement would go out the roof and we'd miss most of the benefit of 
> thin clients.
> 
> Daniel.

That's true, but you wrote "will the RAM in the server..." not "will the virtual 
memory..." You would have to allocate plenty of swap.

I can't believe that LTSP doesn't have RAM utilisation limits per user, but I 
can't find anything after a quick search on LTSP.org