Configuring swap space

[Dave Hammond]

I have always configured machines with the maximum swap space, figuring
that it was better to have too much than too little (especially with 4mb
of RAM in an 8 user system).

I am currently configuring a 16 user system with a 310mb ESDI drive and
10mb of RAM.  The max recommended swap space for the 310mb disk is 50mb.
This appears excessive to me.  Do I really need 50mb of swap space?

The system will be primarily running WordPerfect 5.0, which requires an
average of 600kb of RAM for each user.  If all 16 users concurrently ran
WP under a menu shell, it seems to me that I'd need to have 10mb of swap
space available.  The system will not run windows, graphics or other
memory hungry apps, so the chances of any processes needing megabytes of
core seem rather small.

Am I oversimplifying my swap space requirements?  How can I best
determine the max amount of swap space that I'll need on a given system?

--
Dave Hammond
daveh at marob.masa.com
uunet!masa.com!marob!daveh