Re: Swapfiles
Joe Bouchard <joe@bouchard.com> writes:
> On Mon, Apr 15, 2002 at 10:34:54PM -0500, Shyamal Prasad wrote:
> > "Oki" == Oki DZ <okidz@pindad.com> writes:
> >
> > Oki> Hi, On a 128Mbytes machine, how much swap space can it
> > Oki> handle? Would it be all right to assign it 384Mbytes?
> >
> > Yes.
> >
> > I typically assign twice as much swap as RAM, I no longer remember the
> > rationale behind it, but there's nothing wrong with 384Mb either ;-)
>
> I think the original rationale has to do with core dumps. I read
> somewhere that to get a successful core dump swap must be >= 2 * ram.
> That said, when was the last time you read into a core dump? When was
> that last time you dumped core???
>
> It's just one of those laws of the universe that you don't want to
> violate lest you will fly off the surface of the earth at a constant
> velocity tangent to a point on the curve. </sillyness>
It actually depends on how swap is allocated on your system. Linux
only allocates swap when it runs out of RAM, so you really don't need
any swap. Other system, such as HP-UX, pre-allocate swap to make sure
you never run out of RAM. My understanding is that HP-UX actually
pre-allocates swap for physical RAM, and then pre-allocates for all
virtual RAM use, so you need 2*RAM just to be _able_ to use all
physical RAM.
--
Carl Johnson carlj@peak.org
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