[kwlug-disc] Add swap space while a centos server is live.

[unsolicited]

OK, time to ask the questions that should have been asked earlier:

- what 'specs' are on your current 'server', cpu, mem?

- what makes you think you need to add swap space? (Not saying you're 
wrong, just, what's brought the issue to your attention?)

- what partitions / mounts do you currently have? I assume one. Pick 
your favourites, 'fdisk -l', 'parted -l', mount, cat /etc/fstab, cat 
/etc/mtab.

- what are you running / what's causing you concern. e.g. If apache, 
Khalid will have a myriad of suggestions appropriate to your specifics.

As said earlier in the thread, you can make swap space in a file. This 
should be safe to do on the fly. I believe the only time this gets 
weird (slow) is if you have a lot of swap in use, and turn it off. Not 
your case here.

Can anyone chime in as to how to go about determining if you need swap 
space / are running out of memory, etc.

Seems to me systems are a little 'happier' with at least a little swap 
space. If anyone knows that to be not/true, your thoughts would be 
welcome.

I would guess your provider's burst ram means your host will 
dynamically use additional RAM when/as it needs it, so swap would 
likely never be necessary. But everyone's MMV.

If speed is your issue, and it's not net bound, and you've got RAM to 
spare, a ramdisk may help, depending upon your circumstances.

Colin K wrote, On 10/30/2011 1:50 AM:
> my VPS provider redstonehost.com basically told me today that I cant add my
> own swap space because they call it Burst ram in their lingo and basically
> tell me off for asking for trying to add swap space.
> 
> If i'm not mistaken swap space is where the stuff that isnt accessed but
> still needs to be in ram gets stuffed right?
> 
> On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 9:43 PM, Paul Nijjar <paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 09:32:15PM -0400, Colin K wrote:
>>> its hard to tell I've never worked with centos.  Ubuntu kindof coddles
>> you
>>> as  a noob.
>> Then you definitely don't want to try resizing partitions on the fly,
>> in my nonhumble opinion.
>>
>> But to see the file system, the easiest way might be:
>>
>> less /etc/mtab