To swap or not to swap that is the question

[Scott.Prive at storigen.com (Scott Prive)]

I always use 2X memory for swap. On my system, that means losing a gig of disk.

I don't think it ever gets used -- I never notice it. I just consider it insurance.

For example, I remember during the 2.4.x kernel "VM issues", you could get bigger problems if you didn't have 2X or more swap to RAM. 







> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jerry Feldman [mailto:gaf at blu.org]
> Sent: Monday, October 07, 2002 10:15 AM
> To: discuss at blu.org
> Subject: To swap or not to swap that is the question
> 
> 
> Someone sent me email regarding swap space. He mentioned that 
> on memory 
> larger than 512M, one does not need swap. I disagree, but I 
> would like to 
> get some educated opinion on this. 
> Historically, one would configure swap to be 3 X memory. 
> However today with 
> memories typically larger than 100MB, this has changed. Certainly on 
> different types of systems, swap configuration decisions would be 
> different, such as a web or email server where you may have a 
> large number 
> of processes or threads.  
> 
> One reason to have swap on a desktop system is for core 
> dumps. Also, some 
> applications are very memory intensive. It is not unusual for 
> gimp to use 
> 100MB. So, my question boils down to a couple of separate issues:
> First, a typical desktop Linux system with 512MB or more of memory. 
> Second, a server where you are stuck with a configuration 
> since you don't 
> want to take the server down. 
> Thirdly, a desktop system running specialized applications, 
> such as CAD, 
> which may require large memory configurations.  
> -- 
> Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
> Associate Director
> Boston Linux and Unix user group
> http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
> PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
> 
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