Partitioning on RHEL

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Ansar Mohammed <ansarm-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>

| 2. If you have an instance where you need to page 10gb of memory to disk, it
| probably means you have other, bigger issues. i.e what value does a 10gb
| swap partition/file give you? That 2xRAM theory was created 10-12 years ago
| when we had 8-32MB RAM on a system. 

At *least* 20 years ago.

I think suspend to disk (hibernate?) stuffs a RAM image onto the swap.
So I deduce that swap needs to be at least slightly bigger than
physical RAM.

(In the days of APM rather than ACPI, hibernate was done by the BIOS
and the BIOS needed dedicated disk space for this purpose.)

I don't know any logic for coming up with the 2x rule of thumb.  But
it seems to have been good enough to live by for a long time.

| 3. Swap files are as of 2.6 as fast as swap partitions and they can be moved
| around. 

For what it is worth, I like swap partitions:

- if you have multiple OS installations on the machine, they can all
  share the swap partition.  Sharing file-systems doesn't always work
  (I've been bitten by FS labelling done by SELINUX).

  (I admit that old-style swap partitions and new style ones cannot be
  shared.  I bumped into that when installing a 10 year old distro, but
  who else does that?  Besides, old style ones were limited to 128M.)

  An important special case: swap partitions are useful for live CDs

- I like backing up partitions (even if I do it too rarely).  I don't
  like swap files mixed in.
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