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Thread: Swap

  1. December 14th, 2001, 08:37 PM #1
    lekt0r
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    Swap

    I am getting ready to reinstall Windows98 and Linux Mandrake on my computer. I have them installed now but I want to start over with both of them like new. I have a 10 GB HD and I am curious as to what the ideal size is for the swap partition needed for Linux.
    [shadow]Prepare ship for ludicrous speed![/shadow]
  2. December 14th, 2001, 10:57 PM #2
    gaxprels
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    A general rule of thumb for swap is one and a half to two times the size of your RAM up to about 128M. If you have more RAM than that, then just make it the same size as your RAM. Hope this helps.

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  3. December 15th, 2001, 04:26 AM #3
    Ouroboros
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    Question swap

    Does this rule of thumb apply to Win as well as *nix? Just wondering...

    Ouroboros
    "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem"

    "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity."

    -Occam's Razor

  4. December 15th, 2001, 06:15 AM #4
    gaxprels
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    Does this rule of thumb apply to Win as well as *nix? Just wondering...
    Linux uses a separate partition for swap space (by default). I believe Windows uses a swap file, (as opposed to a swap partition) and creates that for you during the installation. I know the size of the swap file can be changed (at least on NT and 2k, etc) but I can't remember how to do it. I don't use Windows unless I have to (like when I'm at work or school) Hope this helps.

    Happy Hacking
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    Warfare is the Way of deception.
    -Sun Tzu \"The Art of War\"
  5. December 15th, 2001, 06:26 AM #5
    s0nIc
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    Cool

    hmm im not sure about Mandrake but with Red Hat.. i'd give it 5MB.. or was that 5 GB?? ahh one of them.. i dun remember.. its been ages since i installed linux in my box and lappy...
  6. December 15th, 2001, 06:50 AM #6
    Matty_Cross
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    Originally posted by Ouroboros
    Does this rule of thumb apply to Win as well as *nix? Just wondering...

    Ouroboros
    This rule of thumb can apply for windows, however, Windows only allows for a max 4095MB page file (I think). I doubt that you actually have 2Gig of RAM(however, if you do, I'm gonna be very jealous)....

    With Windows, its actually a good idea to put the page file on a separate partition and setting the min & max size for the page file to the size of the partition., as it with *nix..
    See, *nix does it the right way from the beginning..
    -Matty_Cross
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  7. December 15th, 2001, 08:08 AM #7
    Ouroboros
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    Post groovy

    Thanks MattyCross...I'll experiment with that for a bit.

    Ouroboros
    "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem"

    "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity."

    -Occam's Razor

  8. December 15th, 2001, 08:26 AM #8
    souleman
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    swap space

    Like gaxprels said, in linux, you want about 1.5 to 2 times your ram as swap space. Normally not more then 128 MB. IF you go to big with it, you can actually slow your system down, because it takes longer trying to find the info it is storing in the swap partition. You can go a little bigger if you are running xWindows, but I wouldn't go much bigger. It is better to just get more ram anyway

    Windows I just set to let windows run the virtual memory. Widows can change it during runtime if it is set that way. If you set it yourself, you can run into the same problems. To small, and you run out of system resources really quickly. To large, and it takes longer to find the info it needs, and slows your system down. Just what we all need, slower windows machines But like Matty said, you can set it to a max an min size. And putting it on a seperate partion keeps it from getting tooo fragmented, so it will help with speed also.
  9. December 15th, 2001, 01:52 PM #9
    UberC0der
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    2.5xRAM=my_recommended_swap

    but no less than

    1xRAM

    Swap is used to move programs in and out of RAM for computation on your CPU. The more you have, the less that has to be stored in RAM, and the more crap you can have active without bogging down the system.

    I believe that the current maximum is 2GB for SWAP. The setup/install utility for many distro's will allow you to create a Swap partition greater than 2GB, but it will just be wasted space.

    Kernels compiled with the high_mem option (4GB RAM or more), have no limitation on Swap, but the kernel must be compiled with this option to make it use anything above 2GB.
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