Swap size on RAM upgrade

[Phil Dobbin]

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Amedee Van Gasse wrote:

> On Wed, August 8, 2012 17:10, Phil Dobbin wrote:

>> I've just upgraded the RAM on an old machine running i686 Precise from
>> 1280 -> 2048 & the swap disk is still as it was before the upgrade.
>>
>> Now, if the box had, say, 4GB's of RAM or greater, it wouldn't be too
>> much of a deal but when dealing with such meagre quantities, I'm
>> thinking it's probably better to adjust the swap size.
>>
>> I've Googled the subject but that's just led me to endless debates on
>> the subject so I'm wondering what is the One True Way to do this on
>> Ubuntu?
> 
> What you found on Google is correct: there is no One True Way.
> Common folklore in the Linux days of yore used to be: swap size = ram size.
> 
> If you use hibernation: your swap must be at least the size of your ram,
> and it must be a partition, not a file. So dig out that Live cd or usb and
> use Gparted (make a backup, disclaimer about data loss, yadda yadda
> yadda).
> 
> If you don't use hibernation: swap can be *any* size, and it can be a
> partition, a file, or a combination of both. Indeed you can have multiple
> swaps.

The machine in question is a Desktop so I don't use hibernation (in
fact, even on my laptops I don't but that's a different story) & System
Monitor is telling me (as a rough estimate) that the swap is 1.5GB which
was set-up by the installer (parted tells me it's a logical linux-swap
weighing in at 1600MB).

So, again via System monitor, the installed physical RAM is 2.2GB.

I think I'll leave well enough alone unless something crops up important
enough to start changing things.

Many thanks to everybody for all their help,

Cheers,

  Phil...

- -- 
currently (ab)using
CentOS 6.2, Debian Squeeze, Fedora Beefy, OS X Snow Leopard, Ubuntu Precise

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