swap disk size
 

I have a question about the proper size my swap disk needs to be. Im running slackware 8.1 on a dual PIII 550 , 512 sdram , 40 gig IBM hd. And of coarse other hardware that dosnt really matter to this questiong. I orginally set the computer up with slackware 7.1 then upgraded to 8.1 with the packages. Ok back to my question. This is how the hard drive is set up.

partition 1 1.5 gig set to /
partition 2 128 ram set as swap disk
partition 3 set with the rest of the hd, set as /usr

I have slackware for dummies and it said to go with triple or at least double the amount of ram you have. So i figured that meant I needed 1024 swap disk. Then it goes on to say not to exceed 128 megs on the swap disk. It is worded funny and I may not be reading it right. Could any one tell me if I did it right. The computer fine. Runs fast in X and out of X. However I havent really used any resorce hungry program yet.

If I did this wrong is there a way to redistribute the hd space without having to reinstall the os. Thanks for any help you all can offer.

The "double your RAM" rule was made up long ago when computers did not have much RAM. You've got more than enough, and really don't need such a large swap partition, but if you've got the space to spare I wouldn't worry about trying to change it back.

It's generally better to have too much swap space than too little swap space anyway, though I've never heard whether or not too much can degrade performance (perhaps someone else knows).

Re: swap disk size
 

In modern machines with decent memory swap isn't nearly as critical as it used to be. I have 256M RAM, and I have ran a swap from 128M to 392M with no observable difference whatsoever in how the system operates.

I have my system set for 392M SWAP and don't believe I have ever -really- needed swap.

It's just not that critical anymore unless you are running a server or something.

Others may feel differently.