> How much swap space does 4GB ram ideally requires?
RAM doesn't require sap space. It's the lack of RAM which does.
There are typically 2 cases where you "lack" RAM:
- when you're using more memory than you have. This was historically
the justification for the "2x" rule, but nowadays it's fairly unusual
to lack RAM on a laptop/desktop computer.
- when you want to turn off the RAM (aka "hibernate").
> I mean, is it okay if I use 1 GB of swap space (or lesser) for a 4gb
> RAM ?
Yes, it's probably perfectly sufficient for normal use.
But it probably won't be sufficient if/when you try to hibernate.
What I do:
- use LVM.
- allocate swap as an LVM volume.
- grow swap on the fly if/when it proves insufficient. So far,
I did bump into a "can't hibernate" situation on an 8GB machine with
a 4GB swap, so my 8GB machine has 6GB of swap currently.
Stefan
