Johnathan Bailes wrote:
duh forgot about swap
From the Redhat manual guide from forever ago.
A swap partition (at least 32MB) — swap partitions are used to support virtual memory. In other words, data is written to a swap partition when there is not enough RAM to store the data your system is processing. The size of your swap partition should be equal to twice your computer's RAM, or 32MB, whichever amount is larger.
For example, if you have 1GB of RAM or less, your swap partition should be at least equal to the amount of RAM on your system, up to two times the RAM. For more than 1GB of RAM, 2GB of swap is recommended. Creating a large swap space partition will be especially helpful if you plan to upgrade your RAM at a later time.
IMV the best swap is no swap. The box I'm using right now has 512 Mb RAM. It has 512 Mb swap (for some of my workload I do actually need it).
RAM is cheap (I've said this before!). If I add 1 Gb RAM, as I can, what justication is there for saying I need 1.5 Gbyte of swap?
I don't see any, the contention surely is absurd.
Further, I see no advantage to using a swap partition over using a swap file. If I'd create a 1 Gbyte swap partition when I installed, then decuded to use more RAM instead, how do I reclaim that wasted disk space. Or, if I decide I need more swap, how do I do it? Add a swap file? Two swap areas on one disk seriously bad.
Reinstall? You gotta be joking. Backup and restore? Get real!
If I were using a swap file, then I could create and use a new one and recover the first at my leisure.
What advantage does a swap partition have over a swap file? None that I know of. Read the documentation on the 2.6 kernel.
Now, multidisk servers may be different, particularly if you have a (small) fast disk you can dedicate to swap use.
There are more arguments, possibly if you google for my name and swap files & partitions you will discover them.
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Cheers John
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