How to increase RAM size with a swap partition on USB stick?

[Neo_78]

I am testing FatDog64 814 in RAM-only mode (no harddrive) booted via DVD on a fairly old laptop with 3GB of RAM. A RAM upgrade is unfortunately not possible due to the lack of module availability on the market.

Is it possible to use a USB thumbdrive that remains connected to the system as a "swap partition" to avoid that the system runs out of memory? How would this have to be set up?

Would a different initrd option of the remastered boot DVD help to keep the RAM consumption lower?

https://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/f ... nitrd.html

The running system just needs to be able to connect to the internet via one of the provided browsers.

Thanks for your feedback!

[p310don]

You can put a swap partition / file onto a USB stick, but note that it'll probably be painfully slow when swapping happens.

You can alter settings in swappiness to get better results, turning it down will reduce the risk of swapping unnecessarily.

[Neo_78]

Thanks @p310don. How exactly do you create a swap partition in Fatdog and control / adjust the swap behaviour of the system?

Would using the "mini" initrd reduce the ram usage of the system or would this only reduce the boot time?

[p310don]

The starting point would be:

Control Panel

Disk

Create Swapfile

and go from there. I wouldn't worry too much about changing the swappiness settings unless you come across a problem.