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Date:      Sun, 7 Oct 2001 14:32:31 +0200
From:      Erik Trulsson <ertr1013@student.uu.se>
To:        default <default013subscriptions@hotmail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ideal swap partition space...
Message-ID:  <20011007143231.A5864@student.uu.se>
In-Reply-To: <OE44wbymh2v8nBmiZDu0000a388@hotmail.com>
References:  <OE44wbymh2v8nBmiZDu0000a388@hotmail.com>

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On Sun, Oct 07, 2001 at 05:15:12AM -0500, default wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm curious about setting up the amount of space for the swap partition...
> is there any ideal amount for FreeBSD? Or is it dependant on the size/type
> of hard drive & other hardware that one has? If so, is there any kind of
> equasion or theory behind determining what is the best amount to provide for
> the best performance?
> 
> Is there such a thing as a swap partition that is too large?

How much swap you need depend on how much RAM you have and the memory
requirements of the programs you run.

The general rule of thumb is that swap should be twice as large as the
amount of physical RAM in the machine.

The idea behind that rule is that if you have less than that you risk
running out of swap and if you need more swap than that your machine is
probably going to swap so much that it will slow down to a standstill.

This might be adjusted up or down depending on various things.
For example if you have very little memory you might want a larger swap
partition so that you can handle temporary amounts of large memory
usage. (Running out of swap is Not Fun.)
If you have a lot of RAM on the other hand you might not need any swap
at all.

The only downside of creating a large swap-partition is that that
portion of the disk is no longer usable for files.
I think there are limits to how much swap one can have configured but I
think that limit is somewhare around the 20-30 GB mark.



-- 
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013@student.uu.se


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