| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
jodathmorr
n00b
Joined: 09 Jul 2004
Posts: 66
Location: Philadelphia
|
 Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 6:44 pm Post subject: Swap not being utilized? |
 |
|
| Quick question. I run torsmo and under torsmo I have a meter for my swap space. I dunno whether its a problem with torsmo or linux, but I've never seen my swap space ever get used. Is this because torsmo has a problem monitoring swap or is there a bigger problem here? I would like my system to use its swap space since I created it for a reason. How can I fix this? |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
angoraspruce
Apprentice
Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Posts: 193
Location: Minnesota, USA
|
| Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 6:51 pm Post subject: Re: Swap not being utilized? |
|
|
| jodathmorr wrote: | | I would like my system to use its swap space since I created it for a reason. How can I fix this? |
If I understand it right, a system won't use swap unless it has to because it's not efficient as using memory.
| Code: | ]$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 503 496 7 0 207 66
-/+ buffers/cache: 221 282
Swap: 2047 19 2028
|
If you have decent memory as mine (decent, not great), then there's not much use for swapping things out. If fact, if you want, you could do away with swap altogether...assuming you had decent or better memeory. (Now you might have to tweak your kernel slightly, but of that I'm not sure. I just know that for whatever reason, configuring a swapless system is not unheard of.)
Best regards  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
jodathmorr
n00b
Joined: 09 Jul 2004
Posts: 66
Location: Philadelphia
|
| Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 6:55 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Well I do have 1gb of RAM... I guess thats the reason. I always though swap acted as a second kind of RAM which helped things compile quicker. Oh well.. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
cram
Guru
Joined: 17 Nov 2002
Posts: 312
Location: Saskatoon, Canada
|
| Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 6:59 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I have 1GB RAM as well, and generally only see swap start to get used after at least several days of uptime and a fair number of programs running.
_________________
aaarggghhhh.
Good point Chewie. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
madbiker
Guru
Joined: 12 Oct 2003
Posts: 439
Location: Victoria, BC, Canada
|
| Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 6:59 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| jodathmorr wrote: | | Well I do have 1gb of RAM... I guess thats the reason. I always though swap acted as a second kind of RAM which helped things compile quicker. Oh well.. |
Swap space is on your HD, which is *significantly* slower than RAM. You want as much stuff as possible to be going on in your RAM. For huge compiles when a lot of data needs to be stored at a time, sometimes the RAM you have isn't enough, and the system must resort to using swap space. You have a lot of ram, so you'll probably only see this when you're doing rather intensive things (ie. compiling two large things at once while having a bunch of programs open etc).
Read up on swapiness as well. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
Other Things Gentoo
