Installation guide

32 Chapter 4. Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Using this formula, a system with 2 GB of physical RAM would have 4 GB of swap, while one
with 3 GB of physical RAM would have 5 GB of swap. Creating a large swap space partition can
be especially helpful if you plan to upgrade your RAM at a later time.
Tip
If your partitioning scheme requires a swap partition that is larger than 2 GB, you should create
an additional swap partition. For example, if you need 4 GB of swap, you should create two 2 GB
swap partitions. If you have 4 GB of RAM, you should create three 2 GB swap partitions. Red Hat
Enterprise Linux supports up to 32 swap files.
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).
• A root partition (500 MB - 5.0 GB) — this is where "/" (the root directory) is located. In this
setup, all files (except those stored in /boot/efi) are on the root partition.
A 500 MB partition allows you to install a minimal installation, while a 5.0 GB root partition lets
you perform a full installation, choosing all package groups.
Unless you have a reason for doing otherwise, we recommend that you create the following partitions
for x86, AMD64, and Intel® EM64T systems:
• A swap partition (at least 256 MB) — swap partitions are used to support virtual memory. In other
words, data is written to a swap partition when there is not enough RAM to store the data your
system is processing.
If you are unsure about what size swap partition to create, make it twice the amount of RAM on
your machine (but no larger than 2 GB). It must be of type swap.
Creation of the proper amount of swap space varies depending on a number of factors including the
following (in descending order of importance):
• The applications running on the machine.
• The amount of physical RAM is installed on the machine.
• The version of the OS.
Swap should equal 2x physical RAM for up to 2 GB of physical RAM, and then 1x physical RAM
for any amount above 2 GB, but never less than 32 MB.
Using this formula, a system with 2 GB of physical RAM would have 4 GB of swap, while one
with 3 GB of physical RAM would have 5 GB of swap. Creating a large swap space partition can
be especially helpful if you plan to upgrade your RAM at a later time.
Tip
If your partitioning scheme requires a swap partition that is larger than 2 GB, you should create
an additional swap partition. For example, if you need 4 GB of swap, you should create two 2 GB
swap partitions. If you have 4 GB of RAM, you should create three 2 GB swap partitions. Red Hat
Enterprise Linux supports up to 32 swap files.
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).
• A /boot/ partition (100 MB) — the partition mounted on /boot/ contains the operating system
kernel (which allows your system to boot Red Hat Enterprise Linux), along with files used during
the bootstrap process. Due to the limitations of most PC BIOSes, creating a small partition to hold
these files is a good idea. For most users, a 100 MB boot partition is sufficient.