Linked by David Adams on Thu 20th Nov 2008 04:19 UTC
Linux and other Unix-like operating systems use the term "swap" to describe both the act of moving memory pages between RAM and disk. It is common to use a whole partition of a hard disk for swapping. However, with the 2.6 Linux kernel, swap files are just as fast as swap partitions. Now, many admins (both Windows and Linux/UNIX) follow an old rule of thumb that your swap partition should be twice the size of your main system RAM. Let us say Iâve 32GB RAM, should I set swap space to 64 GB? Is 64 GB of swap space really required? How big should your Linux / UNIX swap space be?
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Member since:
2006-07-15
yeah, this makes much more sense.
)
just target a memory size that your system needs and make the swap size with whats missing from your ram !
with the weird calculations that the article mentions, sometimes its "better" ( as in you have less swap ) with less ram !
i just target the 2GB size. As i already have 2 gb of ram there isnt any swap needed.
if you have 512MB, dont make a 1 gb swap , as your system will only have 1.5 GB memory capacity, but a 1.5 GB swap so it reaches the 2GB capacity. ( just in theory, since linux will hardly ever need that for normal desktop usage )
having said that, from the article i guess i better make a 3 gb swap so my laptop can suspend to ram. (anyways, whats 3 gb more or less in my hardrive ?!?