Swap file size

[Rick069]

How big should a swap file be? Is the rule of thumb, "the bigger the better" or "the smaller the better"?

 

 

[moved from Software by spinynorman]

[arctic]

Rule of thumb:

2 x your RAM size. if you have up to 512 MB RAM. :)

[Gowator]

It depenmds what you are doing but usually with a gig of RAM I turn it off altogether .. you can create it in case you need it and then turn it off ..

 

If you have different physcial disks on different controller then using the disk not being read from will usually help ...

[paul]

2 x ram up to 512

1.5 x ram 512 - 1536

1 x ram 1536 - 4096

1/2 ram 4096 - infinity

 

that's my rule

[Rick069]

Well, I don't know if this was ok to do, but I had a harddrive I was not using and I used it as the swap file. Its 160GB. Do I need it that big?

[paul]

bahahaha

 

nice one ;)

[arctic]

160 GB swap??? Wow.. what do you want to store in there? The complete database of the pentagon? :D As explained, if you have 256 MB RAM, use 512 MB swap, if you have 512 MB RAM, use e.g. 1GB swap. It more or less irrelevant where you place the swap partition on a harddrive, as some will tell you that it is best as a first partition, others will say, put it behind root, other say place it at the end of the drive. That is up to you. But using a 160 GB drive as swap only is a great way to waste storage capacity. ;)

[Ixthusdan]

I have 500MB swap and it never gets used. I have 768MB RAM.

[Rick069]

160 GB swap??? Wow.. what do you want to store in there? The complete database of the pentagon? :D As explained, if you have 256 MB RAM, use 512 MB swap, if you have 512 MB RAM, use e.g. 1GB swap. It more or less irrelevant where you place the swap partition on a harddrive, as some will tell you that it is best as a first partition, others will say, put it behind root, other say place it at the end of the drive. That is up to you. But using a 160 GB drive as swap only is a great way to waste storage capacity. ;)

 

Understood.

[iphitus]

2 x ram up to 512

1.5 x ram 512 - 1536

1 x ram 1536 - 4096

1/2 ram 4096 - infinity

 

that's my rule

 

half of infinity.... oh god.

[ianw1974]

Easiest way if you want to remove it, is to check your /etc/fstab and find the line that mentions swap. It will have /dev/hdxx against it, where xx is a letter and number of the drive. I will assume /dev/hdb1 for example, although could also be sdxx too if sata/scsi drive.

 

So, to disable it:

 

swapoff /dev/hdb1

 

once this has been done, we can now remove the partition. Go into System/Configuration/Configure Your Computer/Mount Points and choose the Create, delete, resize partitions option. Click OK when prompted.

 

Next you will see the disks. With more disks, you'll need to choose from a list. Remember the /dev/xxxx before, make sure you have this selected. It will be easy to work it out, because the whole disk will be green as this is the colour assigned to swap within Mandriva's tools. Click it once, and then you should see some buttons. Maybe resize it to about 1GB and then you have the rest of the disk spare for creating some partitions on. You could make one partition for example, and call the mount point /data. Then you could store everything you like in here.

 

Of course, you could partition it into other entries like /pictures, /music and/or others to define various categories for stuff if you like. Or just assign to data, and then create directories under data for your topic categories.