Swap (was Re: [Techtalk] /usr Partition)

[Kathryn Andersen]

On Thu, Jan 19, 2006 at 11:06:00PM -0500, Travis Casey wrote:
> On Jan 19, 2006, at 2:09 PM, Akkana Peck wrote:
> 
> >A typical partition scheme for me (obviously it depends on disk size):
> >
> >* One /boot, small (maybe 64-128M).
> >* Several (three or four) / partitions, 4.5-10G each.
> >* A swap (I'm still confused as to how big to make swap).
> 
> If you want to be able to analyze the results of system memory in the  
> event of a crash and full core dump, swap should be at least as big  
> as system memory.  If you don't care, then the only thing you need  
> swap for is if everything you're running won't fit into memory at once.

This is interesting, because when I was first starting with Linux about
'95 or so (golly, that's about ten years!) I was told that swap should
be 2 1/2 times the size of memory.

> The modern rule of thumb is to have it equal to the size of memory if  
> you're feeling a little paranoid.

What about if you want to use software suspend?  I gather that this
suspends your system to your swap space, which means it needs to be at
least the size of memory, and possibly more -- because what if you were
suspending and the swap space was *already* being used?  This, I do not
understand how it works.

Kathryn Andersen
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