[ubuntu-uk] Partitioning Questions

[Dave Ewart]

On Monday, 30.04.2007 at 08:39 +0100, Kris Marsh wrote:

> 1. The recommended amount of swap used to be 2*main memory. I
> generally don't bother with this, as I think 2GB of swap is a waste
> for 1GB main memory. However, if you want to use hibernate and such,
> then you will need to at least match your main memory with your swap
> size (i.e. 1GB for you). Depending on whether you run some really
> memory intensive programs, you may like to stick with 1GB.

This is a tricky one.

The 'old' recommendation is probably still appropriate, in my opinion.
However, one needs to remember that *swapped* and *swapping* are two
different things.

A system which has many applications swapped out to disk will probably
be running fine.

A system which is continually swapping applications/data in and out of
swap is probably performing poorly.

Having sufficient swap space gives your system more options for memory
management.  Even if it doesn't need it often, when it *does* need it,
it may well need a *lot*.  And if a particular scenario requires that
you have insufficient RAM+swap for what you're doing, you will run into
trouble.

Unless you're *really* pushed for disk space, keeping 2xRAM around is a
good idea, in my opinion.

There are people who can explain the technical (kernel-level) detail of
this better than me, but I'd just like to add that anecdotal advice of
"my system has always run fine with no/little swap space" is not, in
itself, sufficient to justify that that should always be recommended to
others.  Different systems have different usage patterns and hardware
limitations, after all.

Dave.
-- 
Dave Ewart - davee at sungate.co.uk - jabber: davee at jabber.org - freenode: davee
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