Wise disk parting.

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

Steve Lindemann wrote:
> 
> In days gone by the rule of thumb for *nix was swap should be 1/2 the
> size of RAM.  Hadn't heard about that rule changing, but then I'm not on
> the bleeding edge these days....  though on my servers with 16GB of RAM
> it felt like a bit much setting swap to 8GB (but I did it anyway 8^)
> 
I though the old rule was to for swap to be 2x RAM. This was because
a core dump would use 1x RAM size of swap. This is no longer the
case. Now days, if you are doing suspend to disk, you need slightly
more then the amount of RAM in swap space, plus what you need for
normal operation. If you are not going to suspend to disk, then the
swap space needed depends on the system. If you have enough RAM, you
do not need any swap space. For example, this system has 1M of RAM,
and it normally uses more then 5M of swap space. There are no simple
rules for swap size any more.

The thing to remember is that swap space is used for when you do not
have enough physical  memory. It is sometime used for keeping
program that are sleeping handy for reloading, but still freeing up
RAM for other uses. (A program may get swapped out when more RAM is
needed, and left swapped out even though there is RAM being used for
buffers...)

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!

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