virtual memory (swap)
 

Hi. I'm new to Linux and switched to it (Mandrake 9) from Windows xp some time ago now.. After trying to use the search function with no success (maybe I just didn't use proper search word??), I resorted to ask help here..
My question is: How do I increase the virtual memory in Mandrake?
swap partition is now 495 Mb (hda5), but I'd like to increase it to at least to 1 Gb. Is there a safe and easy way to do this? Other than that, I'm very surprised to see the quality and functions in that spesific OS, and will most certainly buy it (or other linux-based) later on.. Thank you in advance,
starquake

Why on earth do you need that much memory? And what's your memory usage been? You'll find Linux generally uses substantially less than Windows. Anyway - you'll need to use parted or similar app to resize the partition. It's generally safe and reasonably easy. Rule of thumb is to always back up no matter what, of course.

Digiot, thanks for replying. Well, I'm just SOOO new to this and got used to Windozes large swap part.. For me things seem to be loading slower at times with Linux, so I thought that increasing virtual memory would help..

Well, you can issue the 'free' command or run 'top' to get an idea of the usage. And if you are running slow, more physical memory will always be faster - virtual memory's slower than physical. But if you are running out, neither would hurt.

Still, it's kind of odd that things would be slow for you. Sounds like it might be configuration or compilation issues - like things aren't optimized or set up right for your machine. That would depend on the app and you'd need somebody more knowledgeable than me - I'm pretty new at this myself. :) Good luck.

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 247404 244156 3248 0 4560 99380
-/+ buffers/cache: 140216 107188
Swap: 506008 47044 45896

I'm new to computers in general, does this tell you or anyone if I have enough memory?? I have 514mb physical. Programs run fine, but I wish the start-up to be quicker.. How do I find if I run something I don't need in the background?
Sorry if these are already asked and answered elsewhere..

Unless it looks a whole lot worse than this, I would certainly not add more swap space, as you are using less than 10% of it, and much of your used memory is in buffers. Obviously though, given the fact you have 47044 kb swap used something was using it initially at which event you could have experienced your slowdown. Note that you still have about 458964 kb left (you left off the last digit in the cut and paste. (Can you tell if the slowdown you are experiencing while the system is swapping -- say with some monitor like xosview?)

Do you have 2 hard drives installed on your system? If so it could be advantageous to add another swap space on it (you could the reduce the size of the current one) and set them up to run in parallel. Also, you can always get more memory so avoid swapping almost altogether.

Note that if you get in a situation where you are running out of swap, it is possible to quickly add swap space location as a file (even the existing windows .swp file or whatever they are using these days if you still have a windows system on your computer on a vfat fs).

Thanks fsbooks and digiot! I guess I'll just go into store to buy more physical memory afterall.. I'm not experiencing real troubles here so Thanks again..

BTW: You can have more than one swap partition. The max limits are 8 partitions of 2gb each. Just add them to your /etc/fstab. You can also have swap files similar to windows but will be slower then partitions.

I have 768mb of ram and my MDK 9 uses about 239mb and zero swap. But it depends on what you got running.