Marc,

On Tue, 11 Dec 2001, "Müller, Markus" wrote:
> A friend of mine told me I should set the swap partition twice as big as
> the RAM, he always seemed to do this...
>
> I'm still a rookie with this stuff, so I listen to any advice I get...

If you have lots of disk space, it is not worth the trouble to change the
partitions on your system. With today's large disks, this is rarely an
issue with a new system. Of course, some of us are fond of recycling older
hardware by putting it to good use as network servers. In that case, you
may well have limited disk space to build your system; then it may matter
how much swap space you allocate. In your case, you might be able to
recover 512 MB (could be significant on a 2 GB drive).

It is possible to make a better estimate of the swap space you actually
need if you know how much virtual memory you need. This is not as simple
as it sounds. The best way to find out is to look at a live system with a
full load and see how much swap space it uses. There may always be some
swapping (gurus?) though I have heard that one can put NetBSD into ROM
with no swap space at all.

I hope this is helpful.

-- 
Claude Marinier, Information Technology Group    claude.marinier@dreo.dnd.ca
Defence Research Establishment Ottawa (DREO)    (613) 998-4901  FAX 998-2675
3701 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario  K1A 0Z4         http://www.dreo.dnd.ca