RHEL4 - size of SWAP partition: limited to 2Gb for 64 bit kernels?

From: Rupan3rd (rupan.nospam.3rd_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 11/23/05

  • Next message: Jan Gerrit Kootstra: "Re: RHEL4 - size of SWAP partition: limited to 2Gb for 64 bit kernels?" 
    Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 18:42:16 +0100

    Hi there, I am a newbie, hope someone of you can help.

    I have a 4Gb RAM, AMD Opteron 64 machine on which I have to install RHEL4.

    At this link:
    http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/x8664-multi-install-guide/s1-diskpartitioning.html#S2-DISKPARTRECOMMEND

    The official RH documentation says:
    <<[...]we recommend that you create the following partitions for x86, AMD64, and
    Intel® EM64T systems:>>
    [...]
    <<Swap should equal 2x physical RAM for up to 2 GB of physical RAM, and then 1x
    physical RAM for any amount above 2 GB, but never less than 32 MB.>>
    [...]
    <<If your partitioning scheme requires a swap partition that is larger than 2
    GB, you should create an additional swap partition. For example, if you need 4
    GB of swap, you should create two 2 GB swap partitions. If you have 4 GB of RAM,
    you should create three 2 GB swap partitions. Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports
    up to 32 swap files.>>

    So, having 4Gb of RAM I should allocate the same amount of swap space, and
    that's fine.

    What does not convince me is the last sentence taken from the documentation:
    I have a 64 bit CPU and I am installing the x86_64 version of the OS, and AFAIK
    the limitation of the 2Gb SWAP files applies only to 32 bit systems...

    So, should I create:
    a) 1 swap partition of 4Gb
    b) 2 swap partition2 of 2Gb each
    ?

    Does anyone have experience in making use of more than 2Gb of swap within
    a single swap partition larger than that size? Does it work ok?

    Thanx in advance
       Rupan3rd (from Italy)

  • Next message: Jan Gerrit Kootstra: "Re: RHEL4 - size of SWAP partition: limited to 2Gb for 64 bit kernels?"

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