[Bug 1032322] Re: Swap space allocation for large memory systems needs improvement

[Robbie Williamson]

As ex-lead of Foundations and ex-release manager of 10.10, I'm well
aware of bug definitions, thanks.  I also know desktop users "like"
hibernate, despite the project's decision to disable by default.   I
think the issue is that the decision on how to handle swap was taken
back when Ubuntu was a primarily desktop focused OS, and thus it made
sense to do what most needed....times have change, so I certainly think
we should have a UDS session on this and will make sure this occurs.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1032322

Title:
  Swap space allocation for large memory systems needs improvement

Status in “partman-auto” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in “partman-auto” source package in Precise:
  Confirmed
Status in “partman-auto” source package in Quantal:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  The recipe used for automatic swap space allocation during install
  this is:

  100% 512 200% linux-swap
          $lvmok{ }
          $reusemethod{ }
          method{ swap }
          format{ } .

  Where we currently allocate a minimum of 100% of swap (maximum 200%).
  The original justification for this is that you need 100% of your
  memory to guarantee hibernate works (bug #311299).    However, for
  servers, we don't hibernate and often have large amounts of memory
  installed, i.e. 100's of GB or even TBs, and such a method wastes a
  lot of disk space.

  I propose we do at least 100% (probably a bit more) for machines up to
  a certain level of memory (4GB or less.../maybe/ up to 8GB), to ensure
  client machines can hibernate.  However after that, we set some sort
  of sliding scale approach that maxes out at a reasonable amount for
  servers.  Experienced users can always override the settings if they
  want.

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