About to try HD install for first time - SWAP size?

[colin stewart]

Hi All,

I just got knoppix 3.3 today, I've not played with knoppix much before and I was wondering; I just went and wiped the HD ready for an all knoppix install. I made up the usual 3 partitions as per my fairly standard recipe, however I got a little bit of a question arising out of it all:

Normally it's reckoned that as a broad rule of thumb you'd want 2.5 times your memory as a swap size. however I see comments like 512Mb max. If I got 512Mb mem, then I would guess that indicates +1280M (or so) for swap instead of the more usual +512M.

I can spare it, so should I, or not? What are the arguments for and against this?

[fingers99]

The old "rule of thumb" 2.5 x RAM is obsolete and has been since 2.4 kernels.

Linux' use of swap is frighteningly sophisticated.

As I see it, popping things which will be seldom used into swap makes sense. Although swap is (much) slower than RAM, the more RAM you have available (due to use of swap) to serve the more frequently called things the quicker the job will be done.

In short, the only argument is swap or no swap. Use more than 1/2 Gig or so and you're just wasting space which could be filled with .oggs or Buffy movies............

[colin stewart]

The old "rule of thumb" 2.5 x RAM is obsolete and has been since 2.4 kernels.

Pardon me I am sure, I'm an old bloke and we tend not to be THAT trendy ;O)

Linux' use of swap is frighteningly sophisticated.

I see, I may not understand fully, but I'm glad enough to hear it!

As I see it, popping things which will be seldom used into swap makes sense. Although swap is (much) slower than RAM, the more RAM you have available (due to use of swap) to serve the more frequently called things the quicker the job will be done.

Yep, that was pretty much my take on it too.

In short, the only argument is swap or no swap. Use more than 1/2 Gig or so and you're just wasting space which could be filled with .oggs or Buffy movies............

Ah, I'm not sure oggs and buffy are really me these days (or even long ago now I think about it), and this is a prototype for a home server I want to build; Could it be that having enough swap beyond all possible doubt may not be such a criminal waste, when seen in that light?

I was perhaps a little less than thoughtful earlier when I referred to "my usual recipe", please do not even remotely misinterpret this as me knowing what on earth I am doing, as I really, really don't! ;O) (I am slowly trying to remedy that in the way that us stumbling old blokes tend to though!)

Thanks heaps for your insight! (still not quite sure whether to "waste" or not mind you, but now it's less tempting than it was earlier) [progress?]