[NTLUG:Discuss] installing redhat 6.2

[David]

On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 07:45:09AM -0800, bryn konti wrote:
> possible development.  The usual minimal partition
> configuration for the workstation is a swap partition
> size equal or greater than 2X the amount of your
> memory a / (root) directory and boot directory. Red

Usually people do include a swap partition, but for many people it's not
necessary.  In the days of desktop machines with 256M or 512M RAM, it's
a very unusual person who actually fills their RAM and needs to turn to
swap space.

There is also a good reason not to use swap space:  security.  Things in
RAM may get written to swap, if you have one.  That includes things
that you may not want written to swap, like your cryptographic keys,
passphrases, and your secret plan to overthrow some small country.  Your
adversary could read this information easily from your swap partition,
if they ever get access to your machine.  Better to dispense with swap,
and keep all that secret information in a nice, volatile and forgetful
RAM chip.  After all, RAM is cheap.

-- 
David Hayes
david at hayes-family.org