几乎所有Linux 系统管理的书上都推荐设置交换分区大小为内存的2倍。这些建议到了现在就是那么适用了，现在的服务器动不动就是 16GB/32GB 内存，难道相应的交换分区也要扩大到 32GB/64GB？根据 OpenBSD 的安装建议：

Many people follow an old rule of thumb that your swap partition should be twice the size of your main system RAM. This rule is nonsense. On a modern system, that’s a LOT of swap, most people prefer that their systems never swap. You don’t want your system to ever run out of RAM+swap, but you usually would rather have enough RAM in the system so it doesn’t need to swap. If you are using a flash device for disk, you probably want no swap partition at all. Use what is appropriate for your needs.

再看看 RHEL 5 推荐的 swap 分区大小：

Swap should equal 2x physical RAM for up to 2 GB of physical RAM, and then an additional 1x physical RAM for any amount above 2 GB, but never less than 32 MB. For systems with really large amounts of RAM (more than 32 GB) you can likely get away with a smaller swap partition (around 1x, or less, of physical RAM).

上面说的是一般情况，在安装系统的时候很难决定多大的交换空间，往往需要根据服务器实际负载、运行情况、以及未来可能应用来综合考虑 swap 分区的大小，所以这里参考推荐最小 swap 大小更实际一些：

4GB 或 4GB 以下内存的系统，最小需要 2GB 交换空间；
大于 4GB 而小于 16GB 内存的系统，最小需要 4GB 交换空间；
大于 16GB 而小于 64GB 内存的系统，最小需要 8GB 交换空间；
大于 64GB 而小于 256GB 内存的系统，最小需要 16GB 交换空间。