Depending on what you do with the system, there is still a chance that some swapping might occur (a very slim chance at this point in time perhaps). On my big system (8 GB of RAM) I have a swap partition of 2 GB to catch any overflow--although I have no idea what I will do in the near future which will actually use it. If the `free' command shows that I ever access swap memory, I will definitely be doing something big. If you do not expect to need any swapping but later find that you do, you can always set up a swap file on an existing partition to handle the situation, and then perhaps add another hard drive for a more permanent swap partition if needed. In any case, setting up a swap partition as large as twice your system memory (4 GB) seems kind of large--how slow your system will be if you actually start swapping several GB at a time... How much swap space to allocate has been debated for many years, and the decision comes down to a slightly educated guess and your own judgement. HTH, and have a great day. On Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 01:44:56AM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: RIPEMD160 > > Hey, the swap question has come up for me now as I will probably be > rebuilding my Linux environment. The old days with small memory, it > was recommended to have a swap something like twice the system > memory. But with larger systems, that seems less valid as I've been > hearing. I have 2 GB of main system memory and when I include the > high-memory option in the kernel, I get all of it available to me. > With 2 gigs, would it be necessary to have any swap at all? I mean, > with this big a machine, could I go and install Linux and not have a > swap at all? I will probably be doing Slackware again do to my > familiarity with it. When I looked briefly at Debian the other day, > it appeared to me that the installer would insist on building a swap > partition regardless of my memory size. > > I'm just wondering if anyone has some ideas on this topic. Thanks. > - -- > HolmesGrown Solutions > The best solutions for the best price! > http://holmesgrown.ld.net/ > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) > > iD8DBQFHgeaIWSjv55S0LfERA0fDAJ9/LmLZ+G2OOyAqzbGSubo/YbctXwCgq2gB > Yv42oBYY+42Lc1dcQZ2na9E= > =jErU > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Ralph. N6BNO. Wisdom comes from central processing, not from I/O. rreid at sunset.net http://personalweb.sunset.net/~rreid ...passing through The City of Internet at the speed of light... SECANT (x) = TAN (x) / COTAN (x)