How much swap is too much

[Lan.]

On a 1.2 gig athlon with 256 pc133 ram, runign RH7.1 for now, but normally running debian 2.2 (about to install debian 2.2r3 tonight)
what do you recommend for swap file.

dual booting with win2k on /hda
debian will replace the temporary rh7.1 i loaded to test vmware on /hdb

i will use vmware to laod debian into windows2k, and vice versa

what would you recommend for the size of my swap partition. keep in mind drive space isnt much of an issue, i can spare a gig or more for that partition.

should i get another 256 ram?

[Danger Fan]

the general rule of thumb for swap space is twice your ram. you really don't need anymore than that.

[Gnu/Vince]

Swap = 2 * RAM. But when you got lots of ram (like 256 M), you can go with 1.5*RAM for the swap as you probably won't go over it

[dvdnut]

this is not necessarily true for 2 reasons

1. if you have a small amount of ram say 8meg, then a 16 meg swap partition aint gonna do much

2. if you have 512meg, then a gig of swap is being stupid.

i would say, for instance, for ram greater than 100meg, match it with ram, any greater, take it down a notch

eg
8 meg, 50 meg swap (estimation)
512meg 200 meg swap, maybe more depending on your work load

[Skroob]

Since 2.2r3 uses the 2.2 kernel you don't really need twice your ram. Supposedly with 2.4 it is a good idea though. Even if you have tons of ram. I read kernel-traffic from time to time and this came up there. It has something to do with the new OOM stuff I believe.