On Mon, Jan 13, 2020 at 6:45 AM Geo Kozey via arch-general <arch-general@archlinux.org> wrote:
There are many tools to configure zram available, one is even in Arch Linux repos: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/systemd-swap/
Right. And typically they don't co-exist, they expect they're the only one. So the first one that runs, works. Additional ones fail with confusing error messages - even if it's a non-fatal failure, it's kinda messy for users. I think it's inherently valuable for users to have a consistent interface for configuring something as basic as swap. Including swap on ZRAM. Is it really a feature that the user needs to know about specific implementations? As a generator, rather than a script, there's quite a bit of code reuse. It uses existing facilities in systemd to load the zram kernel module, to mkswap, and to swapon. It's much lighter weight than the existing alternatives, and is suitable for always including it in an installation by default, just like the existing swap units, rather than expecting users to manually install a package. Also, there's a better chance systemd/zram-generator can be adopted across distributions, which improves user experience. -- Chris Murphy