[geeks] Swap Memory..

[Dave McGuire]

On Sunday, October 20, 2002, at 01:17 AM, Bill Bradford wrote:
>> I have planned to install Soalris 8 Production box with  8 gb internal
>> drives and 2048mb ram. Is that i need to allocate 4 gb (2* ram) of 
>> swap
>> space ?? Because i need my /usr /opt /var directory needs atleast 4, 
>> 1 gb
>> each.
>> It sun recommends to have swap less than my memory??
>
> What we do on production servers is 2G of swap, or 2X physical RAM (but
> no MORE than 2G).
>
> The "swap = 2x physical RAM" is a holdover from the "old days" when 
> disk
> was cheaper than memory.

   It's also a holdover from a SunOS4 kernel limitation that prevented 
the use of main memory that wasn't "backed" by swap space...i.e., if 
you had 16MB of physical memory but only 8MB of swap space, you could 
only use 8MB of physical memory.

         -Dave

--
Dave McGuire          "PC users only know two 'solutions'...
St. Petersburg, FL       reboot and upgrade."    -Jonathan Patschke