[PLUG] Swapless swapfile? (Workstation with 1gb RAM)

[J.A. Henshaw]

Derek Loree wrote:

> 
> "J.A. Henshaw" wrote:
> 
> 
>>
>>I never could figure out how this logic is justified-
>>If I have 12 gigs of RAM,  do I need a 12 gig swap file?
>>If I have 16 megs of RAM, do I REALLY only need a 16 meg swap??
>>Of course this is illogical, particularly obvious when taken
>>to extremes as suggested above.
>>
> 
> I'll have to agree, it seems like the less RAM you have, the bigger the
> swap/RAM ratio should be.  Granted that paging to a disk is time consuming, at
> least you would be able to run more than one application at a time.
> 
> I recommend using a swap partition (placed on the fast part of the drive)
> instead of a swap file.
> 
> 
>>How about the more RAM you have,  the smaller the swap file
>>you need?
>>
> 
> It also seems that with a large amount of RAM, and (a) fixed swap partition(s)
> there is no reason to limit your swap space.  The main reason I can see for
> setting your initial swap space equal to your RAM is the partition scheme (I
> never leave free space on a drive, I paid for the whole thing, I want to be
> able to use the whole thing). If the system needs it, there it is, if it
> doesn't, no performance lost because the swap exists.
> 
> BTW, we have a dual proc PIII with 1Gig of RAM, running apache, mysql,
> postgresql, php and some other fun stuff, been up for over 80 days, never
> touched the swap file (better than 600Megs are used for cache).
> 
> Just another $0.02
> 
> Derek Loree
> 

Ditto with my dual 366 512 meg system 0K swap in use, 245 
megs free, lotsa stuff running etc

I agree on using the real estate you paid for,  but I 
thought I'd bring the whole thing up because somewhere 
there's someone starved for space running twice his ram is 
swap who may not realize it may not be necessary to reserve 
so much room.
Especially now that RAM is so cheap and we all have as much 
as we can squeeze in.

jH