any swap utilities I can use on fc5

Aaron Konstam akonstam at sbcglobal.net
Thu May 17 14:29:06 UTC 2007


On Wed, 2007-05-16 at 17:58 -0600, Phil Meyer wrote:
> 
> Many automated tools used to assume swap == 2xRAM
> 
> This is not true of any modern UNIX system, including Linux.
> Linux does not need any swap at all to run.
> Very few applications still force swap to exist before loading
> (Oracle 
> still does I think).
I agree with the tenor of you argument except to say that Linux does not
need swap is a little to strong a statement. Linux may run without swap
but not well if you are running large programs that are not compute
intensive.
> 
> So a system with 8GB RAM does NOT, in all likelihood, need 16GB swap.
> 
> In fact, a 32bit UNIX/Linux kernel may be limited to 2GB swap MAX.
> If 
> you need more, you should lay it out in 2GB chunks.
> 
> And further, a Linux system running 32bit kernels will waste anything 
> above 3GB RAM.  It takes a special kernel mod to use more, and even
> then 
> its not quite 'native'.
> 
> Therefore:
> 
> Are you running a 64bit kernel on a system with 8GB or more RAM?
> If so, a 16GB swap may indeed be useful in some very marginal 
> circumstances, such as many instances of Oracle on the same system.
> 
> In most normal circumstances, not.
> 
> Good luck!
--
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Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: akonstam at sbcglobal.net




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