SwapMon v3.1 (c)Keith Jones ---------------------------- The Only Swapfile Utility You Need A word about swapfiles ---------------------- Have you ever noticed your system becoming sluggish and unresponsive, for no apparent reason? One possible cause is that your initial swap file size is too small and OS/2 has stepped in to manage it. This will be a common problem during your early days - the installed default swapfile size isn't that big. But how do you know how big it should be? SwapMon is the answer to this question! This small utility will tell you at a glance if the problem is swap file size and (if it is) how big it should be. As you use OS/2 and have SwapMon active you will see that certain applications will cause the swapfile to grow (Netscape always does it to me) but if you only use these applications infrequently then there's no need to increase the swapfile size. SwapMon allows you to watch what's happening and with this information you will be able to judge the correct size. SwapMon will also monitor your swapfile usage and keep this information across sessions. Using this usage figure will allow it to determine the best size for your swapfile. Do you really *need* a 100MB swapfile? After all you might only be using 20MB of it. Installation ------------ Create a subdirectory for SwapMon to live in and unzip the SwapMOn.zip archive into it. Run install.cmd in this subdirectory and SwapMon will be installed onto your desktop. SwapMon uses its own device driver, which will be installed when you run install.cmd. Because of this you will need to restart OS/2 for the changes to take place. If you have previously installed any version of SwapMon 2 then you will have to remove the device line for THESEUS2.SYS from your CONFIG.SYS Usage ----- In use SwapMon displays three figures. The first is the initial size of your swap file, as given in the SWAPPATH setting in your config.sys. The second is the current size of your swap file. Depending on your settings then if the current size is larger all information displayed will be in red, otherwise it'll be in black. The final figure is the size of your swapfile which is actually in use. If your swapfile is currently larger than it's initial setting then you need to consider increasing the initial size of your swap file. This can be done by editing your config.sys (or you can let SwapMon do this - see the section headed 'Menus'). Find the line which says: SWAPPATH=E:\OS2\SYSTEM 2048 2048 (your numbers and location may not be the same). You need to change the last number. So, suppose that SwapMon was saying that the current swap file was 7168 you would need to change the last figure. Using the line shown above it would become: SWAPPATH=E:\OS2\SYSTEM 2048 7168 Save your new config.sys, shutdown and reboot. Your system performance should now improve! You should also see the Menu item "Statistics Show" in the next section. In fact, here it is.... Menus ----- SwapMon has the following menu options: File (Alt F) ---- Setup (Alt S) - this will bring up a dialog which will allow you to set the alarm method to visual (turns the information displayed to red if your current swapfile exceeds its initial value) and audable (irritating one second beep if the current swapfile exceeds its initial value). You can also set the interval between checks of current swapfile size (a value between 1 second and 5 minutes is possible). The default button will set the alarm to visual and the interval to 5 seconds. Statistics Show (Alt O) - this will show the accumulated data which SwapMon keeps. Based upon your maximum swapfile usage SwapMon will make an educated guess on what your swapfile size should be and will display this suggestion. If you click on OK then it will make a backup copy of CONFIG.SYS (called config.swm) and write a new CONFIG.SYS with the initial value set to the suggested swapfile size. Please note that the increase will not take effect until you've shutdown and rebooted. Statistics Reset (Alt R) - this will reset the accumulated statistics to the current swapfile size and the current usage. Of course it'll ask for confirmation before it does this. Exit (Alt X) - ummmm. Exits? Help (Alt H) ---- About (Alt A) - displays a small dialog which tells you the current version and how to contact me. History ------- v0.1 so bare as to be useless. Never released although a certain magazine was offered a copy. Nothing happened. v1.0 first general release. v1.1 bug fix. v2.0 SwapMon gets usefull. v2.01 bugette fixette. v2.02 Uppercasing in CONFIG.SYS stopped (thanks Raul Barragan!). v2.03 Slider not displaying on 800x600 fixed (Raul Barragan again) v2.04 All dialogs altered to display at all resolutions. v2.1 Statistics reset menu option added (Raul Barragan). Statistics submenu created. Key shortcuts added. v2.2 Restore screen position between runs added (Gary M. Svejkovsky) v3.0 Dropped THESEUS2 support and added own device driver. v3.1 Minor bug fix. Finally ------ If you've got this archive from somewhere other than http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~kjones/ then you should check there to ensure that you've got the most up to date version. The latest version is displayed on the home page and at the top of this document. SwapMon is freeware, but the copyright's mine. I accept no responsibility for any damage which you or SwapMon may do by editing your config.sys (you do keep backups, don't you?). The icon used by SwapMon is taken from David Edwards collection. This is in a zip file called iconde.zip and is a great help for anyone who's totally useless with this sort of thing! Thanks David. If you wish to contact me with comments or suggestion then email me at kjones@dircon.co.uk If you need to inform me of a problem then please include as much information as you can. "It doesn't work" won't help and all that'll happen is we'll get into a twenty questions session. v1.1 came about because of a bug which caused to calculations to go wrong. Here's an extract from the mail message I received from Steve Campisano: SC>There seems to be a problem though and I'm sure it's more than SC>likely on my end. SC>The SwapMon values (in RED) are: Initial 92160k, Current 4194301k. SC>My CONFIG.SYS entry is: SWAPPATH=E:\ 2048 92160. SC>The hard drive that the above swap file is located on is a 402 meg SC>separate physical unit from the 2 gig drive I boot Warp off of. SC>This 402 meg drive is broken down into a number of logical drives SC>and is mapped in the following manner (info from Partition Magic): I hold this up as an example of how to report a bug. He's gave me all the information I needed to track down the problem and fix it. If you need to report a bug (and I don't just mean for this prpgram) then that's the way to do it. Thanks Steve Dedication ---------- In the history of SwapMon there are two people which I would like to single out for special thanks. The first is Peter Fitzsimmons who is the President of A:WARE Inc in Toronto. Without his help I wouldn't have been able to write the device driver. The second is Raul Barragan who is the official SwapMon beta tester. He's shown extreme patience in the face of my constant changes and has offered invaluable advice during SwapMon's development. Keith Jones 30th May 1997