What size for the swap with a kernel 2.4x and 8GB RAM 659
I have Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 ES with 8 GB of memory as well. My kernel is 2.4.21-40.ELhugemem that I got March 15 with their major update #7.
following words to the mbuttes incomp.os.linux.misc...: I was corrected on the above, as it would seem that the size limit to the swap pertains to one swap parbreastion, and the Linux kernel can...
If you run the machine as I do, you might get by with none. I have 8 GBytes of swap space, the machine has been running since March 15 and has not paged at all since then. Your load may be different from mine, however.
With some versions of UNIX, it used to be true that you needed at least as much swap space as the running process required, even if it turned out that they would never be swapped out. If I am not mistaken, Linux never worked that way, and if all your processes would fit in memory you needed no swap space at all. In either case, it makes sense to allocate some swap space, except in dedicated embedded systems, just in case. How much depends on what you are doing. Why not make 2 GBytes parbreastion for paging and see if you use much of it. If so, make another paging parbreastion on a different hard drive. If you are doing a lot of paging, you need more memory.
Black Sun and said: This depends on the number of RAM-hungry programs you're running. You could probably get by with as little as 1G of swap here. It's useful to have *some* swap, naturally...
I never thought much of the 2x rule for Linux. In fact any such rule for Linux makes little sense. If you have little memory, having double that in paging space might not be enough, and if you have 8 GBytes, you might never need any. Now if you do not have enough RAM, making the swap space larger is not the answer; putting more RAM in the machine is the answer. And if I ran out of space on this thing (unlikely), I can go up only to 16 GBytes because of limitations of the mother board, and limited to 64 GBytes by limitations of the processors and chip set.
Yes: add up the working set size of all the processes, including the kernel. Subtract that from the amount of RAM you have. If the result is positive, you need no swap space. If negative, you need some.
ArintŽ You provide little information, so I'll guess at a few possible issues. Since the script works for you, the first...
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What size for the swap with a kernel 2.4x and 8GB RAM 660
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