*BSD News Article 47698


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From: dobrien@seas.gwu.edu (David O'Brien)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: How many swap for FreeBSD ??
Date: 31 Jul 1995 23:51:18 GMT
Organization: George Washington University
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Distribution: world
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Matt Dillon (dillon@best.com) wrote:
: :In article <3vipqp$suj@news.Belgium.EU.net>, Danny Backx  <u27113@kb.be> wrote:
: :>dillon@best.com (Matt Dillon) wrote:
: :>>    The rule of thumb is to put twice as much swap in as you have
: :>
: :>The 2*RAM rule is a lot of crap !
: :>

:      No shit sherlock!  That's why it is called "A rule of thumb".  I would
:      be pleased if you took my comments in their proper context before you
:      spewed forth, and it would perhaps be a good idea, as well, to give the 
:      poor guy a better answer then the equivalent of 'experiment for a couple 
:      of weeks repartitioning your disk every other day until you hit upon 
:      the right amount'.


Acutally, both of you are right.  The 2*RAM is crap.  In the older days
(at least with Sun's) you tended to get a workstation with N amount of
RAM and it kept going up as OpenWindows and everything else grew.
Remember when 16-24meg in an SPARC 1 or IPC was the norm?  Today, I
don't know of anyone that puts less than 32meg in their Classics or
Sparc5.  So the 2*RAM may have some maret.

But, FreeBSD'ers seem to run anywhere from 8meg-64meg.  So the 2*RAM
doesn't help much.  What would be nice, like suggested above, for people
to give their experiences rather than an "play with it your self".
Re-partitioning a disk can be a real pain when you have real data on it.

A "I run X, and ususally two copies of gcc, and rn at the same time with
N amount of swap" would be nice.

-- David	(dobrien@seas.gwu.edu)