> > There are too damn many myths about swap out there. Like this one: Always > configure twice as much swap as you have ram. Why? Why would I need more swap > if I increased my ram? You need at least a little bit of swap for peak memory > usage. Let's look at real numbers. Say, I am a bit low of ram for today's > computers. I have 256MB ram. For peak usage, I add 128MB swap. I open so many > applications/documents that the box starts swapping out 20MB. Sure, without > swap space, I wouldn't have been able to open the last document. But nothing > makes me stop there. I can as well run out of swap. The rule I always used (and do use) is twice ram, up to one gig of ram. Pretty much after that, I just do a gig of swap, and monitor it for growth. If my swap goes up AT ALL, I examine the typical workload on the box and consider adding ram. Ram may be more expensive than disk, but at less than $100 or so per gig, it's pretty cheap. I use swap as a "safety net", allowing me enough time to react if something goes nuts or leaks. > > If you have 2GB of ram and 2GB of swap your total available memory is 4GB. If > you need more you have to add either ram or swap. What you add is your choice > based on your needs for speed and the money you are willing to spend on > memory. That's it. > > End of rant. > > Uwe
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