Is swap really needed when RAM's aplenty

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Wed, 2010-08-18 at 11:37 +0000, JB wrote:
> Sam Varshavchik <mrsam <at> courier-mta.com> writes:
> 
> > 
> > I'll probably have a new server with 16 gigs of RAM on the way, soon.
> > 
> > With this amount of RAM being sufficient, do I really need a swap partition 
> > set up? I do understand that a swap partition is needed for hibernation, but 
> > this server does not need to hibernate.
> > 
> 
> It is a matter of having it ready when you need it.
> Even if you may think you do not need it, a software installation may check for
> it.
> 
> Example:
> 2.1.2 Server Component Swap Space Requirements
> Table 2 Swap Space Requirements for Oracle Database XE Server 10g
> Your Computer's RAM         	Swap Space Needed
> Between 0 and 256 megabytes     3 times the size of RAM
> Between 256 and 512 megabytes   2 times the size of RAM
> 512 megabytes and greater       1024 megabytes

"swap space" != "swap partition". If it matters you can always create a
swap file when needed.

poc