[Techtalk] Swap away

[Gayathri Swaminathan]

Hi:

A recent incident motivated me to research a bit on swapping.

The question I was researching on was "How large should my swap be?"

There is no single answer but only different views.

The generalized unanimous answer is:

In old days, 2.4.x kernels when physical memory was small 64-128MB we set
swap to be roughly 1.5xphysical or 2xphysical, but in these days when we are
able to buy 4GB physical RAM, it is really up to **one** to set their swap

Added to this confusion 2.6.x kernels allow you to alter
"/proc/sys/vm/swappiness"
and tweak swap

How do I know, how much swap I need?

Thanks,
Gayathri