On 5 Oct 2002, Evan Read wrote:
> My understanding is that it is a good idea ;)
>
> Even a little swap is handy, otherwise Linux kernel code exhibits bad
> performance. Though bad is relative. There is a document on the web
> discussing Linux vs FreeBSD database performance with 0 swap space.
>
> FreeBSD was ok (obviously designed to deal with it) and Linux sucked
> (having _some_ swap made all the difference).
>
> Can't immediately find the reference. Anyone else remember it?
>
> Prolly gonna be fixed in 2.6 I suppose.
For a counter-argument, the general rule of thumb for early 2.4.x kernels
(up to about 12 or so) was that you wanted either:
1. no swap
2. swap == 2x RAM
That bug has since been fixed, and you now just need enough swap for your
particular workload. I don't think it's true, in the general case, that
swap is absolutely needed for performance....
later,
chris
