[arch-general] Install wiki - recommendations regarding 'swap' ?

[C Anthony Risinger]

On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 8:46 PM, David C. Rankin
<drankinatty at suddenlinkmail.com> wrote:
> All,
>
>   After installing without AIF, I want to update the install wiki to drop a note
> about swap. It isn't addressed at all. What is the current Arch recommendation
> regarding swap creation? I.E.: recommended for systems w/less that 1G of RAM,
> create swap file of what size? (256M?) Even if swap is not recommended, I at
> least want to drop that note in the basic install. Thanks.

i don't hibernate, but i still like 1-to-1 or so mapping of swap to
RAM, mainly because swap space is the backing store for tmpfs and any
low-mem situations ... i've had OOM killer come in and murder stuff i
really wished it wouldn't have, and if tmpfs does happen to fill (i've
done it multiple times) things are "nicer" when swap is around to
relieve pressure, because tmpfs files can simply be swapped out if not
in use.

i also had a really nasty webkit bug that took ~3 days to track, and
it turned out to be due to lack of swap -- linux kernel disables or at
least limits memory overcommit when swap is not present:
http://trac.webkit.org/changeset/86957 -- so now i keep some around
just so things are smoother.

-- 

C Anthony