swap size for system with 512M RAM

rlyacht · Apprentice Joined: 17 Apr 2002 Posts: 170

The installation guide recommends a swap size of twice the amount of RAM. My desktop system has 512M -- do I really need 1G of swap?!

reves · Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2002 2:21 am Post subject:

taskara · Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2002 8:21 am Post subject:

depends.. I have 1 gig of ram, and emerging openoffice uses almost all of it

99% of the time you prob won't even need to use any swap... but it doesn't hurt to have it there..

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Larde · Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2002 10:06 am Post subject:

SlCKB0Y · Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2002 9:03 am Post subject:

i have 512mb of ram and am using 512mb of swap

Lovechild · Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2002 10:05 am Post subject:

I have 512 Megs and my Swap partition is 1 GB to support plenty space to dump my entire RAM holdings into swap during software suspend.

taskara · Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2002 10:10 am Post subject:

how do you configure software suspend ?
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Lovechild · Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2002 12:36 pm Post subject:

jondkent · Apprentice Joined: 26 Jul 2002 Posts: 289 Location: London

It all depends on what you want to use your system for. 1*RAM is fine, but even that maybe overkill. It you have disk space to kill you might as well use 1*RAM, if not you might be able to get away with less.

Jon

Yoannez · Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2002 3:48 pm Post subject:

Hi

I just whant to say that I have a T22, 394Mb Ram and 56 Mb swap...
What a crazy guy? No
First the swap rule of 2* ram size was invented when you had super machines with 16Mb of Ram now that doesn't make sense since swap is a memory extension, used to store unused ram, so the rule now should be changed. To user defined...
Why because only the user or sysadmin know what is the machine for! And therefore only them know what memory will beused and what amount, and do we have any need to store unused ram? And if we do why is it unused?
In my case I have a laptop, so has a laptop it is constantly working. And then either shutdown or stanby so no need to store unused ram. The amount of physical ram is not always used to the max so there is no need for sawp. I decided to keep a 56Mb sawp space for those long compilations... Hope this can help
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hook · Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2002 4:26 pm Post subject:

actually you don't need swap at all

...it's there just if you run out of memory

...so with 512MB you can live without

...unless you are using some s.e.r.i.o.u.s. mem-eating programs

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reves · Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2002 6:40 pm Post subject:

fmalabre · Guru Joined: 19 Jun 2002 Posts: 376 Location: Chicago

JeroenV · Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2002 11:21 pm Post subject:

I agree with hook... I've been running Linuxes for years now using the following rule (my own

):

puddpunk · l33t Joined: 20 Jul 2002 Posts: 681 Location: New Zealand

its the way the older kernels used to handle swap space.

Having a swap drive of 2*RAM was the optimal amount for the kernel to play with

hook · Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2002 12:08 pm Post subject:

the idea behind the swap=ram*2 was (as puddpunk said) the older kernels' way of using swap: they synced all the ram into the swap partition when they ran out of it ...so you needed to have (exactly) two times the the amaount of ram for your swap ...this way you could support two syncs

p.s. that is what i was told a few years ago

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JeroenV · Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2002 12:46 pm Post subject:

Ok, that makes sense

But for the new kernels I suppose my formula would be fine :?:

(Officially that is, I know it works in practise :wink:

)

And in windows? First thing I used to do when I still used windows (NT-like) was setting the swap-file to a fixed size, also using my formula. I wouldn't trust that OS doing things on it's own, like growing/shrinking swap-space

Cheers

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hook · Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2002 12:54 pm Post subject:

i use that forula too

it works fine with me

about wintendo: i don't trust that OS with anything ...i just use it for games
_________________
tea+free software+law=hook

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kl@us · Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2002 12:59 pm Post subject:

hook · Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2002 1:16 pm Post subject:

i don't know ...i never had any problems with ram and swap

...so i don't know why mldonkey eats so much ram

...but isn't mldonkey a win app? ...if it is, it probably runs on wine which is a REAL mem-devourer

btw: kl@us i like the bit with the .jpg chicks

hehe
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kl@us · Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2002 1:33 pm Post subject:

hook · Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2002 2:10 pm Post subject:

sorry

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Malakin · Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2002 9:10 pm Post subject:

I used to run with 512M ram and no swap but at one point I noticed occasionally I'd leave my computer, come back and something like Mozilla would be closed (open when I left the computer) or the system would be unstable, it wasn't obvious what the problem was but I ended up figuring out that it had run out of memory and started killing processes, adding 512M of swap space has stopped that from ever happening again.

It depends on what you run but for most people on modern systems who run lots of apps at a time like me you'll probably want to have your ram + swap = 1G+ to be on the safe side. If you're ever curious if it's using your swap or how much it's using you can do a "cat /proc/swaps"

You don't need a swap partition, you can setup a swap file wherever you want. A swap partition will help performance so if you're low on ram and expect a lot of swapping it's a good idea to have a separate partition for it.

arkane · l33t Joined: 30 Apr 2002 Posts: 918 Location: Phoenix, AZ

I had that problem, also.. until I started using WindowMaker again. (from KDE)
Once I was back in WindowMaker, I haven't even touched swap... well, there was once, it was a java application that parsed XML, and OH my god, it sucked up all of my available memory, ram and swap..... (GPL application... and the author knew it did this... it was a TV guide listing app for Satellite and cable channels)