On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 2:33 PM, Leigh Sharpe <leigh.sharpe@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi All,
I'm about to set up a new linux box, but not all of the bits have arrived yet. I currently only have 512MB of RAM in the machine, but ultimately, it will have at least 2GB, possibly 4.
If I let the installer do it's own thing with HDD partitioning, it will set up a swap size of 2 x RAM. But that's not what I want. 2 x the current amount of RAM will be inadequate once I install more.
So, if I set up 8GB of swap, expecting that I'll eventually have 4GB of RAM, is having too much swap going to be a problem in the meantime?
Is there a downside to having a large amount of swap?

Personally I think swap = ram x 2 is an old rule that doesn't make sense any more.

Unless you plan to suspend, then you really don't need any more than 1gb of swap.

Just enough for the kernel to use for paging things in and out.

Quite frankly if you find yourself needing 1gb of swap, or even 500mb of swap then you need to re-evaluate your hardware.

cheers,

/ Brett