[aclug-L] Re: Dual swap partitions

[Tom Hull <thull@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

John Reinke wrote:
> 
> When I originally formatted my 13GB hard drive, I made two 128MB partitions
> to be used for swap. During installation, I could only specify one
> partition for swap, so that's all I've used. Right now, I'm a little low on
> RAM for what I'm working on, and I'd like to use both partitions for swap
> if it is possible.
> 
> 1) How do I go about getting Linux to recognize and use both partitions for
> swap?

Add a line to your /etc/fstab file. You should already have one line; just
copy and change the raw device name (first column). Reboot will do swapon -a,
but you can run this manually or run swapon raw-device-name.

Check /proc/swaps to verify that both partitions are used.

> 2) Are there any performance differences for using two swap partitions as
> opposed to using only one?

Shouldn't be a problem. Swap files are supposed to be a bit slower, but
even there I'd guess that performance is still dominated by disk issues.
Multiple swap partitions could actually be faster, if on separate disks,
and the software was smart enough to parallelize their use. (I doubt that,
too.)

BTW, I've heard that the 128M limit is obsolete -- has been for some time.

> Thanks,
> John

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