[CentOS] Re: Apparently no swap configured

Tue Oct 28 15:29:43 UTC 2008
Scott Silva <ssilva at sgvwater.com>

on 10-28-2008 3:25 AM William L. Maltby spake the following:
> On Tue, 2008-10-28 at 00:21 -0700, John R Pierce wrote:
>> Ian Masters wrote:
>>> which show your swap partition, whereas on my problem system, 'swapon
>>> -s' produces no output at all.
>>>   
>> ok, that confirms your supposition, you have no swap configured.
> 
> Although I disagree, some on this list have proclaimed that a "properly
> configured" (for the intended use I guess) system needs no swap.
> 
>> <snip>
> 
A properly configured system "can" need no swap for day to day operations, but
you only need *one* runaway process to max out the memory and bring the system
to a crashing halt. A little swap is just like a cheap insurance policy. You
hope you don't need it, but if you do, you are glad it was there.

Even though the recommended swap is 2 times system memory, I have never made a
swap partition over 2 GB. Maybe I am also flirting with disaster, but haven't
been bit yet in years. Usually a run away process that hits into swap gives
enough time for the kernel to kill it off before the whole system dumps.


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