How much swap should I use in this comp?

[MBMarduk]

I read 2.4.x kernels need 2xRAM as much for a swap partition.

But I don't think I can have a 1.5 GB swap partition when having 768MB of RAM!?

Can anyone shed light on this??
TIA,
-Mike

[MBMarduk]

Oh, I forgot: These articles on linuxdoc.org didNOT help:
http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Partition/partition-4.html#SWAPSIZE
http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Installation-HOWTO/index.html

[TacKat]

The 2xRAM is just a rough estimate type of thing. If you have 768 megs of physical RAM, I can't really envision you running out all that soon (unless you run your entire HD at once ;) ) but just to be safe, I'd allocate anywhere from 400-700 megs for swapping; depending on how liberal you can be with your harddrive space.

[MBMarduk]

Great, Thanx!
I'm in the process of installing Lin on my enlightened Bro's comp so...I really needed this data right away :)
-Mike

[stiles]

Originally posted by TacKat:
<STRONG>The 2xRAM is just a rough estimate type of thing.</STRONG>

Actually sence 2.4 Alan Cox has recomended over this over and over when people have vm/swap issues. The reason is if a page is swaped back into memory it stays in swap (their is a performance benifit, but it's easy to run out of swap on computers with swap partitions that are small relitave to memory).

That being said w/ 2.4.8 a patch by Rik van Riel has been merged that changes this behavior of swap. Actually there is quite a few changes invloving the VM and swap in 2.4.8, which is a good thing.

Depends on how well these new changes work out, and how much you swap to begin with (your memory load if you will).

[ 14 August 2001: Message edited by: stiles ]