When I first started messing with Linux, maybe 7 years ago, there was a
noticeable limit on swap partitions. I think it was something like 256MB and
you could only have 16 such partitions. Maybe it was 16MB and you could
have 256 swap partitions, nah, that can't be right. I don't remember.
That was back around 2.0 days, maybe earlier. Now, with most folks
running 2.4, the limits are big enough that most people don't run into a
problem. The guys building the kernel aren't doing it because they're
stupid.
There are performance considerations for where on the disk you put the swap
partition, usually right after root, but it doesn't matter much in most
situations. I seem to recall, not sure, that having a second EIDE disk
for all swap could yield some performance boost if you had it on the second
channel as a master instead of as a slave on the first. For all but the
cheapest MOBOs that only takes another cable.
Unless you're seriously rocking your machine it probably won't make much
difference.
Here's what I've got:
Mem:642208K av,631892K used,10316K free,1236K shrd,92548Kbuff
Swap: 1334048K av,0K used,1334048K free
With a bit over half a GB of RAM, 6 virtual X desktops, loads of crap
running at the moment, I'm not even touching my 1.3GB swap partition.
Hook it up and see if you can get it to work. I don't think you have much
to worry about.
On Thu, 4 Apr 2002, Paul Braman wrote:
>
> I've got this 4G HD sitting around and I figured I would use it as a "swap
> drive" for an installation I'm doing. (Debian, maybe, if I can be
> convinced I'm still geeky enough.)
>
> My question is, would the Linux kernel get more use out of the drive if I
> partitioned it up into, say, 4 1G partitions or just left it as one, big
> swap space?
>
> Or...does it matter?
>
>
> Paul Braman
> aeon@tampabay.rr.com
>
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