@Gertjan:
Wait !
So, when choosing the automatic installl (hides all the technical details) it decides to make a 40+ Gb swap ? On a 32 Gb RAM system ….
For info : on my 3 Gb system it never uses the swap.
Yes, the installer makes the swap equal to 2xRAM. I have 16GB ECC RAM in that machine, so it made a 32GB swap. Someone should change that installer to ignore 2xRAM if the machine has enough for three reasons:
It's a very old formula for deciding the size of the swap, when machines tended to have very little RAM. I am talking MBs not GBs
For a machine that has enough RAM, swap isn't used much especially for a machine which is up 24/7 which pfSense would be.
swap may be used in desktop OSes for hibernate etc, but for an appliance like pfSense, it's not used as much as indicated by many users here.
@Gertjan:
Btw : on a device like a firewall I would have opted for a raid 1 …. Knowing that you use 'old' drives ;)
That would require me to have 2 drives. The only other 3.5" drive I have is a 500GB that I keep as emergency replacement for my FreeNAS box in case a drive fails. Also, wasting a 500GB drive for pfSense seems like a waste to me, especially since even 80GB would be more than sufficient for what I need it to do.