I don't know where you're seeing the "20M" number. The rule of thumb is to
make your swap partition twice the size of your physical RAM ... so, for example
32 Mb RAM --> 64 Mb swap
64 Mb RAM --> 128 Mb swap
This is only a rule of thumb, though, not an absolute requirement. It needs
to be modified if, for example, you have a very small hard disk and a
restricted application for the host. Kernels also used to (do they still?)
have a limitation on how big a swap partition could be -- 128 Mb as I recall
(though you could have multiple swap partitions). And the rule does come
from the days of expensive RAM ... now I'd be tempted in a production
environment to use more RAM up to the motherboard's limit, and avoid the
speed penalty of swap if at all possible.
At 11:18 AM 2/10/99 +1000, Paul Clyne wrote [excerpts only]:
>I have read the HOWTO on installing Linux and in it there is mention that
>your swap partition should be (20M - RamInMachine).
>
> This makes good sense. However why the 20M figure ?. Is there some
>reason that a bigger swap partition should'nt be used ?. What if you have
>32M Ram, can you therefor not have a swap partition ?. Is a (say) 30M swap
>partition better than a 4M patition (assuming you had 16M ram).
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
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