Create Swap for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Question

I'm using 2 GB RAM I've installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS how much swap do I need to create?

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:25

There is varying opinion on what the size of the swap should be - here are the Example Scenarios provided in the Ubuntu wiki:

RAM(MB) No hibernation  With Hibernation        Absolute maximum
 256     256              512                     512
 512     512             1024                    1024
1024    1024             2048                    2048

RAM(GB) No hibernation  With Hibernation        Absolute maximum
  1      1                2                       2
  2      1                3                       4
  3      2                5                       6
  4      2                6                       8
  5      2                7                      10
  6      2                8                      12
  8      3               11                      16
 12      3               15                      24
 16      4               20                      32
 24      5               29                      48
 32      6               38                      64
 64      8               72                     128
128     11              139                     256

Here also a table from the Fedora 64bit docs:

This mainly depends if you need want to hibernate or not - you need more as it saves the state of the system from the RAM to the swap.

Note swap may slow things down if swappiness is not configured correctly - you can read this question to find out how to do it.

If you need to increase the size of (or create) swap space, there are a few nice answers here.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 10 '14 at 14:28

1

For small RAM sizes like 1 or 2 or 3 GB its better to create a swap partition with double the size of RAM. eg: 4GB in your case. For rams higher like 8 GB swap partition of 2 GB will be sufficient.

answered Jul 10 '14 at 14:28

Sudheer

5,213

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 10 '14 at 14:38

1

Personally I always make my swap 512 MB, just to have some wiggle room. If the OS starts using a lot of swap, you really need more RAM. (And if getting more RAM is not an option, then you can consider having more swap, it's better than nothing.)

answered Jul 10 '14 at 14:38

fkraiem

12,813

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

0

4GB.

Without additional information we can't be specific, so I'm erring on the larger side: 4GB is probably more than you need, and disk space is cheap.

edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Community

1

answered Jul 11 '14 at 05:03

thomasrutter

37,804

Create Swap for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

4 Answers4

4GB.

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