On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 7:12 PM, Tilghman Lesher <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 2:17 PM, James Sizemore <[email protected]> wrote: >> I'll have to disagree with Tilghman on this one. You should always have at >> least as much swap as ram, however double would be over kill. If for no >> other reason than to guaranty you get a full core dumps on system crashes. >> Trying to trouble shoot or root cause assess system crashes without good >> core dumps is difficult if not imposable. >> >> Disk space is cheap, if you can afford the RAM having the swap equal it >> should be a trivial cost, and gives you more time to find fast memory leaks >> before systems go catatonic.
I know this thread is starting to look like a dead horse, but here are some numbers from a few linux vendors: Redhat has an interesting take on this: Amount of RAM in the system Recommended swap space Recommended swap space if allowing for hibernation ⩽ 2GB 2 times the amount of RAM 3 times the amount of RAM > 2GB – 8GB Equal to the amount of RAM 2 times the amount of RAM > 8GB – 64GB 0.5 times the amount of RAM 1.5 times the amount of RAM > 64GB 4GB of swap space No extra space needed source: https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Installation_Guide/s2-diskpartrecommend-x86.html IBM on swap: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-lpic1-v3-102-1/index.html TL;DR: large swap for workstations makes sense, servers not so much -- the workload is more predictable. "A large swap space is also advisable for a system with very small memory. For a server, you might want to use a swap space of about half of your RAM, unless you are running an application that recommends a different value. In any event, you should monitor server memory usage so that you can add real RAM or distribute the workload across additional servers if needed. Too much swapping is seldom good on a server. It is possible to use a swap file, but a dedicated partition performs better. Now we come to a point of divergence. Use of a personal workstation tends to be much less predictable than use of a server. My preference, particularly for new users, is to allocate most of the standard directories (/usr, /opt, /var, etc.) into a single large partition. This is especially useful for new users who may not have a clear idea of what will be installed down the line. A workstation running a graphical desktop and a reasonable number of development tools will likely require 5 or more gigabytes of disk space plus space for user needs. Some larger development tools may require several gigabytes each. I usually allocate somewhere between 40 GB and 60 GB per operating system, and I leave the rest of my disk free to load other distributions. Server workloads will be more stable, and running out of space in a particular filesystem is likely to be more catastrophic. So, for them, you will generally create multiple partitions, spread across multiple disks, possibly using hardware or software RAID or logical volume groups." swap space, or as I have misspelled it before swamp space is one of the most opinionated areas in sys admin camps, so who knows. Andrew McElroy -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
