Red Hat Enterprise 4 and (incorrect?) swap size

[Rick Stevens]

On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 19:22 +0200, Mark Ryden wrote:
> Hello,
>   I am trying to install Red Hat Enterprise 4 on a machine with 64 bit
> processor (Dual Xeon).
> 
> My machine has 2 GB of RAM; at boot, I see on the screen that the
> PC says it has 2GB of RAM (and a look at BIOS validates it).
> 
> I choose "automatic partition".
> 
> There , it says 2GB for swap partition.
> Why is it so? Shouldn't it be, by default,4GB ? (twice the size of RAM)?
> 
> should I leave it so or change ot to 4GB?

Linux can only handle 2GB swap partitions.  It can also only handle a
maximum of 8 swap partitions, giving you a maximum of 16GB of swap.

If you want 4GB of swap, then you need to set up 2 2GB partitions.  When
the system boots, it does a "swapon -a" which activates ALL partitions
marked as swap.

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
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-            The gene pool could use a little chlorine.              -
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