Optimal swap partition size?

On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 17:25:38 GMT, "Leo (Bing) Whiteway"
<bclinux_ca@yahoo.ca> wrote:

>Hi Alex; I would make the swap 256 megs. That is what I have done and
>with Mandrake I used top to see what was going on and saw that swap was
>used up to about 100 megs.

Tnx for your reply. Do you remember how much RAM you had on that
computer?

Alex

Alex wrote:

> I am installing Mandrake 9.1 on a AMD 1300 Mhz with 240 MB RAM (16 MB
> RAM stolen by display adapter)
>
> I shall use it mainly for Internet, Open Office, and playing MP3. I do
> not play games or use demanding graphics proggys.
>
> How big should I make the swap partition? I do not have that much
> harddisk space so I would prefere not to make it bigger than
> neccessary.
>
> Can I skip the swap partition altogether with 240 MB RAM?

This quietrion has almost as many answers as there are *nix users.
Some say 1.5*Ram and other says 2.5*Ram and there are a lot of people in the
middle too. Things will depend on how much applications you may use at one and
the same time, how large your harddrive is. But I would suggest at least 512MB
swap.


//Aho

On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 18:27:44 +0100, J.O. Aho <user@example.net> wrote:

> Alex wrote:

>> I am installing Mandrake 9.1 on a AMD 1300 Mhz with 240 MB RAM (16 MB
>> RAM stolen by display adapter)
>>
>> I shall use it mainly for Internet, Open Office, and playing MP3. I do
>> not play games or use demanding graphics proggys.
>>
>> How big should I make the swap partition? I do not have that much
>> harddisk space so I would prefere not to make it bigger than
>> neccessary.
>>
>> Can I skip the swap partition altogether with 240 MB RAM?

>
> This quietrion has almost as many answers as there are *nix users.
> Some say 1.5*Ram and other says 2.5*Ram and there are a lot of people in the
> middle too. Things will depend on how much applications you may use at one and
> the same time, how large your harddrive is. But I would suggest at least 512MB
> swap.

I second this. My puter has 256MB of RAM and I have had it fill up
512MB of swap space before. Mostly when using pan on large
newsgroups.

--
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On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 12:01:52 +0100, Alex <spamno@nospam.com> wrote:

> I am installing Mandrake 9.1 on a AMD 1300 Mhz with 240 MB RAM (16 MB
> RAM stolen by display adapter)

> I shall use it mainly for Internet, Open Office, and playing MP3. I do
> not play games or use demanding graphics proggys.

> How big should I make the swap partition? I do not have that much
> harddisk space so I would prefere not to make it bigger than
> neccessary.

> Can I skip the swap partition altogether with 240 MB RAM?

> Alex

A good rule of thumb is to make the swap about equal to your memory, up
to a max of around 500MB of swap. If you had less than 240MB, say
54-128MB, it might be better to make the swapfile double the memory. In
your case, using this guideline you'd have about 480MB total,
swap+memory, and that should be plenty for your purposes. If you're
*really* tight on HD space, I'd say you can maybe get along just fine
with about 120-150MB swapfile.

Another good rule of thumb is you have enough installed memnory when you
rarely or never need to use the swapfile. Keep in mind that Linux will
tend to use all your memory, making it *appear* you've used it up. Not
to worry, Linux uses memory very efficiently, much better than Windoze.
You only need to worry you're runing out of memory if your system slows
down because the HD is thrashing around writing to the swap partition a
lot.

Your memory usage will depend a lot on what apps you run and which
desktop you use. To maximize your memory and generally really speed
this box up, you ought to consider running a lightwieght WM like Fluxbox
or IceWM and use a terminal with a small memory footprint like aterm.

--
Registered Linux user #266531