On Wed, 2013-01-30 at 03:31 -0800, Fernando de Oliveira wrote: > 2. How a system with so much RAM is swapping?
Because swap isn't just extra memory to use once RAM runs out. I don't know specifics for Linux, but the OS is free to pre-emptively move data from RAM to swap if it thinks it's appropriate to do so. For example, if that data hasn't been used in a while, it might page it out while the system isn't too busy, so that it doesn't need to do so should you suddenly want all that memory in future. Or it might decide that taking that memory for extra disk cache is a more efficient use, worth the cost of pulling that data out of disk if it's needed. I emphasize that this is theory, not necessarily what Linux is actually doing. The point is simply that the kernel's memory management is more complicated than just "use swap if no RAM remaining". Simon. -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
