how much swapping before you should add ram?

[phospher]

i've questioned this for some time... how much swapping is acceptable before you should add more ram? i currently have a FreeBSD 7.2 machine with 256mb of ram and swapinfo is showing 20%. are there any thumb rules that you use as to when more ram is needed?

thanks gents.

[graudeejs]

add ram, when you think that swapping is bottleneck (when you swap too much)

[Alt]

When you look `top` - if you see "20K in", "10K out" or something constantly.. I think no matter how much pages swapped out - its important how intensively swap is used.

[DutchDaemon]

That's right. Swapping in itself is not bad (dropping idle process memory in swap saves RAM), constant active swapping is bad.

[phospher]

that helps. thanks guys.