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Date:      Mon, 11 Dec 1995 18:33:57 -0500 (EST)
From:      "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org>
To:        Scott Blachowicz <scott@statsci.com>
Cc:        Carey Nairn <cp_nairn@cc.utas.edu.au>, Roland Jay Roberts <jay@map.com>, questions@FreeBSD.org, blair@strech.cyber-naut.com
Subject:   Re: Too much swap????? 
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.91.951211183047.4687B-100000@hub.org>
In-Reply-To: <199512111958.LAA00636@block.statsci.com>

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On Mon, 11 Dec 1995, Scott Blachowicz wrote:

> Carey Nairn <cp_nairn@cc.utas.edu.au> wrote:
> 
> > Probably better if the swap partition is > 2*RAM... I have 16MB RAM and 
> > 32 MB swap and keep running out.   The 32MB swap partition is a hangover 
> > from when I had 8MB RAM... one day I'll have to bite the bullet and 
> > increase my swap space.
> 
> I keep hearing that "2*RAM" guideline, but the problem is that your swap
> space requirement isn't [directly] related to the amount of RAM in your
> system.  It is related to how much stuff you want to run simultaneously
> and how much memory all you stuff needs to run.
> 
> You might be able to come up with some guideline that says something along
> the lines of "your system performance will become 'unacceptable' if your
> swap space is less than N times the amount of RAM".  But 'unacceptable' is
> subjective and it still depends on what you are running.  If you run 4Mb
> of stuff on a system with 16Mb of RAM, it doesn't matter how much swap
> space you have.
>

	Turn on your system, run nothing but bare minimal (ie. login)
and do a pstat -s...

	Does your system use any swap space when idle?

	If I remember right, when a system is generally idle, or a 
process just isn't doing anything  but sitting in the process table,
it will get swapped out (partially?), so that any new or existing
software that is doing something will be able to run un-impeded in
"real memory".


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