Redhat 7.1 tries to impose a 2X mem limit, as it runs Kernel 2.4.

Kernel 2.4's VM is a bit broken, and you are unlikely to be as stable with any less than 2X swap. (ie you run with zero swap, or with 2X memory). Ie, you are more likely to get a crash if you don't follow the guidelines.

Theres a huge discussion on 2.4's VM on the linux-kernel mailing list about a month back (around 200-250 threads), and why exactly you should use 2x swap. I'll try to see if I still have it archived to pull a few choice quotes from Linus/Alan.

Dan

----- Original Message ----- From: "tom potts" madtom1999@yahoo.com To: alug@stu.uea.ac.uk Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2001 9:03 AM Subject: [Alug] How big should a swap partition be?

Redhat 7.1 seems to thing that ram*2 is necessary which may surprise you - I thought about taking all but 32meg out and then installing! I've 256Meg on my laptop and even running Sql/IIs/Forte and a background search/index engine under W2K its not all used so under Linux if your not running everything under the Sun I would have thought you would only want swap when something goes pear shaped. Tom

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