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On Tuesday 22 June 2010 00:04:14 Walter Dnes wrote: |
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> I just got a brand new custom-built 8 gig machine. There's an outfit |
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> in north Toronto that has MSI motherboards with PS/2 ports, so I can |
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> keep my genuine IBM PS/2 clickety-clack-keyboard; wooooohooooo. And the |
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> integrated Intel graphics chip has *BOTH VGA AND DIGITAL OUTPUTS*! |
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> |
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> Anyhow, I have 8 gigs of ram on the sytem (will obviously be 64-bit |
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> Gentoo) and I want to know how much swap I need. The general rule of |
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> thumb is twice the ram. In this case, it would be 16 gigs. I think |
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> that it may not need swap when up, unless I do some heavy duty stuff. |
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> My main concern about a swap partition is how much I need for |
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> hibernate-to-disk to work. Is there a rule about this, or should I |
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> simply allocate 16 gigs out of my terabyte drive, and play it safe? |
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With 8G of ram, you will likely never ever use a single bit of swap for the |
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entire life of the machine. |
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There is no such thing as a decent rule of thumb for how much swap. What does |
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exist, is the following: |
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"What intelligent-sounding (but actually dumb) answer can we give to this |
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infernal question that keeps coming up that will make the user shut up and go |
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away satisfied (regardless of the correctness and workability of the answer)?" |
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That answer is, of course, "Twice your RAM". Said answer is also, bullshit[1]. |
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If I said "42!" it would have made as much semantic sense. |
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Your swap needs depend totally on your usage. There is no rule of thumb[2]. |
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[1] Long ago when 386's were all the rage, 2 X RAM did make some sense. You do |
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not have a 386 and 2 X RAM does not make sense with the hardware you have. |
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[2] If you plan to suspend to disk you will need a certain minimum amount of |
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swap for that. But you already know that, so I'd create that minimum amount. |
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-- |
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alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |