[snippage of the swap discussion for brevity :) ]
I remembered reading something recently about the old salt of making swap
equal to the size of your RAM being outdated. As I got to this stage in
the thread, it struck me where. I actually bought the package for 7.2
because my burner was on the fritz and it came with these handy books.
Okay, really the books aren't so great for folks who've done all this
before (and I have), but they're perfect for someone just joining the
wonderful world of Linux and there happen to be a few good tips for the
rest of us too.
Anyway, I digress. Allow me to quoth from the MandrakeSoft _Installation
and User Guide_ for Linux-Mandrake 7.2:
"Tip: The rule of thumb for the swap partition size is to choose the same
size as your RAM memory. However, for large memory configurations
(>128MB), this rule is not valid, and smaller sizes are preferred."
I went with 128MB for my box. It has 512MB of RAM. I don't think I've seen
swap used yet. ;)
BTW, for the person in the thread who had the very large swap space -- 2GB
I think? I'm not deep enough into Linux to say for sure, but even in the
Windoze world there was a point at which increasing swap space actually
brought a negative return. I wonder if you sized that down to 128MB or
less if you might actually see BETTER performance? Again, I can't say with
anything vaguely resembling authority, but it does seem like things aren't
configured well if you're really using up that much swap.
Best,
Holly
