Best partitioning?

[John Summerfied]

Johnathan Bailes wrote:

> 
> duh forgot about swap
> 
>>From the Redhat manual guide from forever ago.
> 
> A swap partition (at least 32MB) — swap partitions are used to support
> virtual memory. In other words, data is written to a swap partition
> when there is not enough RAM to store the data your system is
> processing. The size of your swap partition should be equal to twice
> your computer's RAM, or 32MB, whichever amount is larger.
> 
> For example, if you have 1GB of RAM or less, your swap partition
> should be at least equal to the amount of RAM on your system, up to
> two times the RAM. For more than 1GB of RAM, 2GB of swap is
> recommended. Creating a large swap space partition will be especially
> helpful if you plan to upgrade your RAM at a later time.
> 

IMV the best swap is no swap. The box I'm using right now has 512 Mb 
RAM. It has 512 Mb swap (for some of my workload I do actually need it).

RAM is cheap (I've said this before!). If I add 1 Gb RAM, as I can, what 
justication is there for saying I need 1.5 Gbyte of swap?

I don't see any, the contention surely is absurd.

Further, I see no advantage to using a swap partition over using a swap 
file. If I'd create a 1 Gbyte swap partition when I installed, then 
decuded to use more RAM instead, how do I reclaim that wasted disk 
space. Or, if I decide I need more swap, how do I do it? Add a swap 
file? Two swap areas on one disk seriously bad.

Reinstall? You gotta be joking.
Backup and restore? Get real!

If I were using a swap file, then I could create and use a new one and 
recover the first at my leisure.

What advantage does a swap partition have over a swap file? None that I 
know of. Read the documentation on the 2.6 kernel.

Now, multidisk servers may be different, particularly if you have a 
(small) fast disk you can dedicate to swap use.

There are more arguments, possibly if you google for my name and swap 
files & partitions you will discover them.




-- 

Cheers
John

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