Swap size in Linux

[Krovax]

Hi, I have computer with 384 Meg of ram and I want to know what size should my swap file should be. Some of my friend told me that it have to be the double size of my ram and each partition should be not greater than 128 Meg.

Please tell me what to do !!!!!
Thanks

[windows cant find vbrun.dll]

You could actually run without one with 384 megs but dont do it. And you definetly dont need 728 megs worth of swap space (atleast I never have) On 128megs I usually set it to 220 and on my main ox with 512 i have at 220 because it only had 128 when I loaded it swap.
No worries!

[dalee100]

I have 128meg sdram and I have my swap set at 64megs.A lot depends on how much you are going to have running at one time.With 348megs ram, I would set the swap to 64megs and you should do just fine.

dalee.

[trekker]

On one box with 256RAM, I set the swap at 128. On another with 128RAM, I have the swap at 128RAM too.

I guess 128RAM or even 64RAM is sufficient for you if you are just using it for normal use.

HTH :)

[dbc]

I've got a 20 Gig hard drive in my system. I read that for serious use (high-traffic server) that it helps to have multiple swap partitions? can anyone elaborate on this?

I put 4 128 Meg swap partitions on my system - how is this different from just having 2? (beside the obvious, of course)
Is there a point where swap partitions are no longer useful? Is it more effective to have a 128M swap than a 512M swap?

thanks in advance
-dbc

[bdg1983]

My PIII-733/512MB running OpenLinux Workstation 3.1 with a bunch of services running and always having 2 instances of Konqueror (1 fileman and other browser) plus KMail and Konsole all loaded on startup and I never have seen my 128MB swap partition used AT ALL.

Even with the way the kernel uses unused memory for buffers/cache, still the swap partition has never been touched. I always have around 300MB real memory free.

[teeitup]

Re: multiple swap aprtitions

The discussion can be taken further.
You wouldn't get a performance benefit if the swap partitions are all on the same drive.
The system's I/O subsystem can only access one drive at a time. Multiple swaps distributed over multiple drives would yield a performance increase if in fact the swap space was being utilized effectivly. To really gain in performance you would spread them accross separate disks on separate controllers.
Then there are storage subsystems with dual controllers, paths, chunk size, and raid levels brought into the mix.

On a basic box using IDE or a single SCSI controller a single swap space should work just fine.