[Scottish] Swap partitions -- do modern boxen really need them? Discuss

[Kevin McDermott]

* Kyle Gordon <kyle@lodge.glasgownet.com> [Jul 16. 2003 12:15]:
> On a slightly related note, with the new 2.6 kernel you now get suspend to 
> swap. This can be slightly problematic if you have less swap than (in use) 
> RAM
> 
> I see your point though, 2xRAM swap does seem slightly excessive, and is 
> probably useless, unless you have a laptop that you wish to use swsusp on. 
> Even then you'd probably only need a little bit more swap than you have RAM. 


Disk is cheap, RAM isn't as cheap, even with 4Gb of RAM you only need 8Gb of SWAP space (at 2xSwap), given that 80Gb and 120Gb disks are becoming the norm, 8Gb of disk space doesn't seem that bad...

Perhaps 8Gb is excessive, but, it's a tried and tested rule-of-thumb.
 
> Talking of which... is there anyway to assign X amount of swap, but only let 
> the kernel use a specific amount?

To what end?

If you're using swap on LVM, you can alter the swap-space at will (this is highly recommended on boxes where you think you're gonna boost the RAM).

HTH

Kevin