hi there, my tiny server is not a champion when it comes to hardware.. normally it doesn't swap, but recently i have run a ram hungry application and it started swapping.
top displays swapped processes nicely, easy to spot. because of its limited dipslay, i had a look at ps's options about showing swapped processes, swap sat unused all this time, so i admit i had holes in this :) turns out, it's normally enough to list all process and look for 'W'. not too many processes with 'W' in their names, so it works for me. i have only limited knowledge about the swapping/paging algorithms implemented in openbsd but i was surprised to see the following behaviour: integer> ps -ax | grep W 4954 p6 R+ 0:00.00 grep W (ksh) no process swapped. repeat this a lot of times. 10, 20, 30. same result. then suddenly around 40 processes in state 'W'. in the next instant, nothing again. then a lot of processes again. i know ps is only showing what was, or might have been, not what it is.. but how come in one moment 40-50 (out of the total 110-120 processes) are "swapped out" and in the next instant none of them? -f -- opinions are like assholes - everybody has one.
