Swap / Was ->Re: INstallation Questions

David Mandala plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
17 Mar 2003 22:21:43 -0700


I have 512M installed and I use 2x that or a gig of swap. It works for
me. On my 128M machine I use 512M swap and that works well too, that
machine actually hit 2x swap once so I'm happy that I gave it more. On
my 64M machine I use 256M (it has a really small HD too).

So for 128M and under I'd use 4x 
256 and over 2x


On Mon, 2003-03-17 at 21:57, Mark Phillips wrote:
> So David, what should the swap size be? 2x memory, 3x, 5x?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Mark Phillips
> Phillips Marketing, Inc.
> mark@phillipsmarketing.biz
> 480 945-0798
> 480 945-9197 fax
> 
> No trees were destroyed in the sending of this contaminant free message,
> however, a significant number of electrons may have been inconvenienced.
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From:	David Mandala [SMTP:davidm@them.com]
> Sent:	Monday, March 17, 2003 9:40 PM
> To:	Plug
> Subject:	Re: Swap / Was ->Re: INstallation Questions
> 
> I go with the recommendation's of the kernel developers. The 2.4.x
> series of kernels can be very aggressive on swap usage. If it starts
> swapping it can take the entire 2x swap space quite quickly. 
> 
> The older 2.2 and 2.0 kernels were usually quite happy with 1x swap
> unless you were on a very small RAM machine and then you might consider
> 2x or more. 
> 
> If the system runs out of memory bad things can happen so it's not worth
> running out of RAM and swap. At the price of HD space today you would be
> silly to spare the swap space and have the kernel starve for space.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Davidm
> 
> On Mon, 2003-03-17 at 20:01, Mike Starke wrote:
> > Does the average user need to even consider a swap
> > as large as 512Mb? How often (if at all) is it going
> > to hit the swap file? Mine never see's the light of day.
> > 
> > Years ago I had a mail server (PII 300 or something) with about 128Mb
> > ram and the same on the swap. The swap never saw the light of day. 300 users
> > on the system  too.
> > 
> > Have I missed something in the swap calculation, or is the ole
> > (swap = ~2x ram) a rough calc only on systems with low ram?
> > 
> > 
> > v/r
> > -Mike
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