[DrSpookles]

This is just a "I am now happy again with Mac OSX" post.

I got my g4dual1.25 a couple months ago, and after two months I noticed that it had slowed down a LOT. It was always slugging around, even to do the most mundane of things. It happened gradually, so I didn't really notice it until it was really bad.

So I erased my hard drive (80GB), and created three paritions:

1. swap -- 768MB
2. jaguar -- 15GB
3. data -- the rest

I used this guide to setting up Jaguar to use the first partition as swap:

http://www.lostboi.com/tutorials/movingswap.html

And then created aliases for most things on my home directory to point to my data partition (such as my music, pics, movies).

Everything is humming along just fine now. It's like I got a new Mac _again_.

Most importantly, I am NEVER installing any haxies, or anything similar. There were probably about 4 or 5 of them installed previously. I'm not sure if they were responsible for the slowdown or not, but I'm not taking my chances again.

Also, this will be great for when 10.3 comes out. No need to lose all of my data again!

Woot!

[tikki]

I partitioned my 20 gig drive into 2 10gig partitions so that os reinstalls will be easier

[suthercd]

I agree on the haxies. Threy are so tempting, but then after a while I toss them and after a Repair Permissions am amazed at the improvement. A couple of months go buy, and the siren song sounds again and I piut one back, then two, etc. Really most of the functionality provided can be almost duplicated in other ways. GUI enhancements are interesting for a while, but don't really enhance the functionality.

Craig

[Simon]

Originally posted by DrSpookles:
And then created aliases for most things on my home directory to point to my data partition (such as my music, pics, movies).!

I was thinking about doing this too.

I have seen in the Finder info window for my second HD that there is a checkbox "Ignore Permissions" or something like that.

Now, if I do symlinks/aliases for my docs so that they can be on a second HD and I want permissions to be respected, is it enough to uncheck that checkbox? What does this mean anyhow? How can Jaguar ignore permissions on a non-system HD? Aren't they either there or not?

[DrSpookles]

Now, if I do symlinks/aliases for my docs so that they can be on a second HD and I want permissions to be respected, is it enough to uncheck that checkbox? What does this mean anyhow? How can Jaguar ignore permissions on a non-system HD? Aren't they either there or not?

If its a unix filesystem underneath, which I'm guessing it is, the permissions will work the same. I believe that you can set permissions on the symbolic link and the other directories within. However, I don't really fool around with permissions much since I'm the only user on this machine.

[Jellytussle]

Originally posted by DrSpookles:
And then created aliases for most things on my home directory to point to my data partition (such as my music, pics, movies).

Why not just move your whole home dir to the data partition? You can change the path by editing the 'home' property in /users/<yourusername> in NetInfo, using NetInfo Manager.

I have (slightly anally) 5 partitions on my TiBook. X Client, X Server, Users, Applications and Data. The idea is, i often run server for dev purposes, but i didn't want too much stuff duplicated. So, i mount the Applications partition at /Applications using /etc/fstab, and point both systems' NetInfo at /Volumes/Users for homedirs. Result, one set of apps, and a common homedir so i have the same setup in server and client. is that a bit sad?

[11011001]

Originally posted by Jellytussle:
Why not just move your whole home dir to the data partition? You can change the path by editing the 'home' property in /users/<yourusername> in NetInfo, using NetInfo Manager.

I have (slightly anally) 5 partitions on my TiBook. X Client, X Server, Users, Applications and Data. The idea is, i often run server for dev purposes, but i didn't want too much stuff duplicated. So, i mount the Applications partition at /Applications using /etc/fstab, and point both systems' NetInfo at /Volumes/Users for homedirs. Result, one set of apps, and a common homedir so i have the same setup in server and client. is that a bit sad?

if I wasn't a geek, I would say yes, but instead, that's cool..

I should have done that when I was partition my 400 gig RAID 0 (hardware) partition.

And the original post, ya.. swap partition makes a difference. But, isn't that 768 mb a little small? mine is 8 gigs!!

[Simon]

Originally posted by 11011001:
And the original post, ya.. swap partition makes a difference. But, isn't that 768 mb a little small? mine is 8 gigs!!

Well, it depends on what you do.

If you look at the swap directory you will see that OS X makes swap files of about 76MB size. For each chunk of vm that is larger than that size another file is is created: swapfile0, swapfile1, etc...

I have 768MB of physical RAM and have seen four of these additional swpafiles at the most. So 4x76MB = 304MB. Therefore I think my 2GB swap partition should be enough in all cases.

The swapfiles are created as needed and that normally happens after all your physical RAM has been used. Check top for that info. So you don't need 512MB of swapfile at boot time just because you have 512MB of physical RAM plugged into your board.

[york28]

Originally posted by DrSpookles:
Most importantly, I am NEVER installing any haxies, or anything similar. There were probably about 4 or 5 of them installed previously. I'm not sure if they were responsible for the slowdown or not, but I'm not taking my chances again.

It's nice that you can do without them. On my iBook i pretty much have to to control the excessive eye candy that can't otherwise get turned off.

I also partitioned my HD recently. I agree it's a good idea.

[DrSpookles]

Originally posted by 11011001:
And the original post, ya.. swap partition makes a difference. But, isn't that 768 mb a little small? mine is 8 gigs!!

Wow. 8 gigs! I wasn't really sure how much I needed, so I created a 768MB one just pulling that figure out of nowhere. I've got a gig of ram, and have only seen 4-5 swapfile files, (with a bunch of things running). I don't really use high memory apps that much, with the exception of photoshop.

I'm a little concerned now that I might have to repartition.. What does macosx do when it runs out of swap space and an app requires more memory? I'm guessing complete disaster, but I've never seen it.

I think the more sane approach would be to shell out $60 for another stick of 512 PC2700 ram, or at least wait until Panther comes out so I have an excuse to repartition more conservatively

[DrSpookles]

Originally posted by york28:
It's nice that you can do without them. On my iBook i pretty much have to to control the excessive eye candy that can't otherwise get turned off.

What kind of iBook do you have? I originally installed haxies on my iBook for the same reasons, but saw the speed increase after I reinstalled Jaguar. It's possible it's all in my head, but I'm almost convinced that they degrade performance over time for some reason.

[Fallout]

I have one 30GB partition on which OSX Server, my apps, and all my stuff reside, and a 7.5GB that has OS9, the swapfiles, Photoshop scratch, the Java cache, etc. It's also used for whatever other OS I feel like installing.

One thing though..I don't see how putting the swapfile on a different partition would make any difference at all. A totally separate HD, yes, but a partition? ..can someone explain that?

[DBvader]

i find that my Dual 867 slows down considerably every so often. after i repair the HD and fix permissions, though, it seems as fast as it used to be...

[Don Pickett]

Having the swap on the same drive as other partitions doesn't speed things up, as all the data is being written to the same bus. If you want to speed things up, move it to a separate drive.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Don Pickett:
Having the swap on the same drive as other partitions doesn't speed things up, as all the data is being written to the same bus. If you want to speed things up, move it to a separate drive.

Things are written to the same bus, that's true.

But nevertheless, if you have only one disk (as is true for most portable users on the road) you have no other choice.

It is still a good idea to have a serparate swap partition as I understand. It prevents the swapfile from being fragmented. This can result in (minor) speed gains.

[DrSpookles]

It is still a good idea to have a serparate swap partition as I understand. It prevents the swapfile from being fragmented. This can result in (minor) speed gains.

This is correct. It is less time the OS has to spend "finding" where to write swap data. In a situation where you are utilizing vm heavily, this can improve your performance.

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by DrSpookles:
This is correct. It is less time the OS has to spend "finding" where to write swap data. In a situation where you are utilizing vm heavily, this can improve your performance.

Re: Signature... "9.2.2, iBook700"

9.2.2?

[DrSpookles]

Originally posted by [APi]TheMan:
Re: Signature... "9.2.2, iBook700"

9.2.2?

Meh, forgot to update. No, running 10.2.6 now.