swap partition

[lumiwa]

When I installed FreeBSD I had 512 MB of RAM and swap partition which I made is 1024MB. Now I have 2 GB RAM. Do I need to resize a swap partition, please?

Thanks.

Mitja

[J65nko]

Although without knowing what you are using the computer for, you probably don't need a bigger swap partition.

You can use current swap usage with swapctl -l.

If you really would need more swap space, then you can increase swap space
by adding swapping to a file. See swapctl(8).

[phoenix]

Monitor swap usage over a long-ish period of time (2-4 weeks). If your system never touches it, you don't have to worry it. If your system does touch swap a lot, then add more RAM.

[robbak]

With the huge amounts of cheap RAM that are becoming standard in systems these days, swap is usually redundant.

However, about the only thing cheaper than RAM these days is HDD space, so it harms nobody to have a few gigs of swap configured. Swap space is required if you want to use hibernation, as the system (IIRC) uses swap to store the system state, and it gives the system some elbow room if things go haywire.
My system is 344K into its 3.8G swap, but it does have 151MB Free.

If it is regularly in use, you should enlarge it (Not and easy task!). One thing you loose if the swap is less than the RAM is that you do not get a core dump if the kernel panics. Unlikely to be an issue for you unless you need to debug a problem in the future.

[graudeejs]

Originally Posted by robbak

One thing you loose if the swap is less than the RAM is that you do not get a core dump if the kernel panics. Unlikely to be an issue for you unless you need to debug a problem in the future.

Who on earth needs dumps.... even more, who would like to analyze them
Ever since i turned of core dumps, apps stopped to crash that much.... (is it for me me only?)

[BSDfan666]

Originally Posted by killasmurf86

Who on earth needs dumps.... even more, who would like to analyze them
Ever since i turned of core dumps, apps stopped to crash that much.... (is it for me me only?)

That's a really bad mindset, yet not an uncommon one..

[Speedy]

Originally Posted by robbak

... If it is regularly in use, you should enlarge it (Not and easy task!).

One can use a swap file. For instance, I was compiling OO in one of my Gentoo boxes, I saw the RAM got filled, swap usage started grow too. I managed to create a 3 GB swap file and turn it on without interrupting the build.