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0 pointsAnderkent8y ago0 comments

>If you don't need it, you don't need it. The other question is: how much swap exactly should I have? And why wouldn't I just add that much RAM instead?

Because adding RAM costs money, adding swap space is a config setting.

It looks to me that your boxes are idle. Sure, if you're not doing any work, it doesn't matter...

>1) Bad assumption 2) it doesn't help you either, so why bother? Actually I might have a use for that disk space. In that case the swap just hurts.

1) Is it? Can you source that claim somehow? 2) It does help you, that's the point. It makes your disk reads faster 3) Your answer to needing memory is 'buy more ram', but you 'may have a use for that disk space'? Buy more disk.

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clarry8y ago

> 1) Is it? Can you source that claim somehow?

Only my anecode. I've had systems become annoyingly sluggish because the OS decided I no longer need something and paged it out, even tough I had plenty of RAM. Turns out I needed that something.

> 2) It does help you, that's the point. It makes your disk reads faster

I just gave my numbers. The systems are not caching nearly as much as I have ram. These numbers come from systems I use every day; they are not idle.

> 3) Your answer to needing memory is 'buy more ram', but you 'may have a use for that disk space'? Buy more disk.

Why are people so hell bent on telling me I should use swap that doesn't actually help me at all? Yes I buy as much as disk as I need, and I'm not putting unnecessary swapfiles or partitions on them. Yes I also buy as much RAM as I need.

The only real justification I see for swap here is that it's cheaper -- poor man's RAM. I call that emergency memory for when you can't have enough RAM. If I have enough memory, swap is completely pointless.

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