[Techtalk] Swap away

[Conor Daly]

On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 12:37:33PM -0500 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
Gayathri Swaminathan thought:
> 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?

I think the current wisdom is have swap if you think you will use it.  If
you have 4Gb physical, you probably won't need swap at all.  OTOH, if you
have a laptop and you want to be able to hibernate, you need at least
1xphysical.

I don't understand swappiness...

Conor
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly at cod.homelinux.org>
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