swap space

[Clifton Royston]

On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 03:02:11PM -0600, Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC wrote:
> On May 3, 2005, at 2:45 PM, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> >Since it's a pain to add swap later you want to make
> >allowances for future expansion (e.g. you'd need 32GB of swap if you
> >ever plan to add 32GB of RAM).
> 
> I understand that people recommend as much swap as you have ram or  
> more.  However, is this required and why? 

  It's needed if you want to be able to collect a crash dump if the
system panics.

> I have a dual opteron  
> system running i386 5.3-release (with released patches) and it has  
> 4GB RAM and only 2GB of swap, which is hardly ever touched, and when  
> it is, just in small amounts.
 
  That's as it should be!

> Why is this a problem?  (If it ever needs the 2gb of swap I am in  
> trouble as the load at that time would be sky high and the machine  
> not really responsive anyway)

  Yes indeed, you do not want to be running your system with full swap. 
You want it only for emergencies.

  -- Clifton

-- 
          Clifton Royston  --  cliftonr at tikitechnologies.com 
         Tiki Technologies Lead Programmer/Software Architect
"I'm gonna tell my son to grow up pretty as the grass is green
And whip-smart as the English Channel's wide..."
                                            -- 'Whip-Smart', Liz Phair