Laptop, add more RAM, need new swap partition?

LeKeiser · 06-09-2017, 05:32 AM

Well, as I said, since it was a fresh install, I prefered to reinstall everything with the new RAM.
But I think I would have run into some issues, since I plan to use the hibernate option. So 8GB RAM, the swap needs to be at least 8GB, or a bit more.
Might have run fine, but it will run better now

syg00 · 06-09-2017, 06:07 AM

Maybe.
Every system I have has 2G swap - this laptop is 8G RAM. Hibernate never fails. It all depends on the memory (anonymous) that is in active use.
But overallocating swap cost nothing in these days of cheap disk.

remma12 · 06-09-2017, 06:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00

But overallocating swap cost nothing in these days of cheap disk.

/thread

LeKeiser · 06-09-2017, 08:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00

Maybe.
Every system I have has 2G swap - this laptop is 8G RAM. Hibernate never fails. It all depends on the memory (anonymous) that is in active use.
But overallocating swap cost nothing in these days of cheap disk.

Yep, but I have often more than 20 tabs opened with Chrome, and some apps running in the background as well. I think if you add them all, it's a bit more than 4GB RAM, so the hibernate might have cause a problem. I guess I'll never know but that's ok

As I said, I didn't want to bother, I used the "basic" install, left the system choose the size, and...

Agreed with the price and the size of the disks nowawdays...

EthanStark · 06-14-2017, 03:54 AM

If you need to use hibernation you need 3GB, otherwise you probably won't use swap very often (if at all). 512MB would be plenty, I tend to go for 1GB because it's a nice round number.

Mike_Walsh · 07-21-2017, 05:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LeKeiser

Just logged very fast on my laptop and launched Chrome with 20 tabs, and I'm quite surprised:

Code:

yves@Yves-Ubuntu:~$ free -h
                      total       utilisé      libre     partagé tamp/cache   disponible
Mem:                  3,8G        2,7G        152M        244M        1,0G        625M
Partition d'échange:              3,9G        4,6M        3,9G

So the RAM is full and so is the swap file...
I guess I really need that 8GB DIMM but also to change the size of the swap file once I have upgraded...

Those figures can be a wee bit misleading, y'know. This is a question often asked by those new to Linux, and, moreover, used to the way that Windows reports things.

Have a look here:-

http://www.linuxatemyram.com/

It explains in straight-forward, beginner-friendly language, what Linux is doing with your RAM. And don't forget, Chrome has always been something of a memory hog, largely due to the way in which its sandboxing process works (setting up a completely isolated environment for every tab you open).....even though memory usage has been addressed in recent releases over the last year.

Mike.

BW-userx · 07-21-2017, 07:51 AM

what are you using? Desktop or Laptop? I got a laptop I use that SD Card slot that I have to other real use for it as my swap drive. Only because Slack say where is your swap ?? when installing, so one day I just stuck a 16GB card in that slot and made it a swap format and it was acceptable to Slack.

I further just installed this Linux OS that is a fork from Debian before systemD yesterday. It too wanted a swap, so I told it to use that SD Card. it works.

Point being is, if you want to use whatever space you'd use for a swap as data storage, using that SD Card slot for your swap maybe a good alternative. picking up a 32GB SD Card is rather inexpensive - it might be worth your while to experiment with that means for your hibernation.

AwesomeMachine · 07-22-2017, 08:14 PM

To make an 8GB swap file:

Code:

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap.file bs=1m count=8000
$ mkswap /swap.file
$ swapon /swap.file

And your ready to go. It doesn't really need to be a separate partition. For hibernate, all the memory must fit in the swap space.

IsaacKuo · 07-24-2017, 05:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AwesomeMachine

To make an 8GB swap file:

Code:

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap.file bs=1m count=8000
$ mkswap /swap.file
$ swapon /swap.file

And your ready to go. It doesn't really need to be a separate partition. For hibernate, all the memory must fit in the swap space.

You may also need to set the file permissions with:

Code:

chmod 600 /swap.file

Trihexagonal · 07-24-2017, 08:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LeKeiser

Just logged very fast on my laptop and launched Chrome with 20 tabs, and I'm quite surprised:

Code:

yves@Yves-Ubuntu:~$ free -h
                      total       utilisé      libre     partagé tamp/cache   disponible
Mem:                  3,8G        2,7G        152M        244M        1,0G        625M
Partition d'échange:              3,9G        4,6M        3,9G

So the RAM is full and so is the swap file...
I guess I really need that 8GB DIMM but also to change the size of the swap file once I have upgraded...

FreeBSD sees free RAM as wasted RAM and allocates it differently than Linux. From top on my machine with 4GB RAM:

Code:

Mem: 435M Active, 1920M Inact, 716M Wired, 363M Buf, 622M Free
Swap: 3598M Total, 132M Used, 3465M Free, 3% Inuse