How much swap?

[Colin McGregor]

--- Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>
wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 25, 2006 at 09:57:30AM -0400, Giles Orr
> wrote:
> > There's this old story that swap space should be
> equal to twice your
> > RAM, and I've heard it for more than a decade of
> working with Unix.
> > But I've never seen a satisfactory explanation (or
> any explanation at
> > all) of why this should be so.  I have this
> bizarre idea that the more
> > RAM you have the less swap you need, and that a
> person with 4Gb of RAM
> > *doesn't* need 8Gb of swap.
> > 
> > Obviously this will be dependent on application: a
> person who expects
> > to be manipulating multi-layer 24"x36" images in
> the GIMP might
> > consider 12Gb of virtual memory merely adequate,
> and servers will have
> > other considerations.
> > 
> > Can anyone explain the whole swap=2xRAM thing to
> me?  Thanks.
> 
> Well I certainly aim for not usually needing swap. 
> Of course some
> people now believe in suspending PCs, which uses
> swap so for that task
> you need at least as much swap as ram, preferably a
> bit more.  If you
> have less, it simply can't suspend.
> 
> Personally I have no idea why I would want to shut
> down my machine at
> all. :)

Simple, at least with my (old) laptop, limited battery
life means (controlled) shutdowns have to be part of
life :-( .

Colin McGregor
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