SWAP not freeing

loonix · 12-28-2003, 10:21 AM

Hi all. I have been given a debian 3.0 box to maintain. kernel 2.4.18. The problem I am having is it WAS using lots of swap I have managed to fix this up but free reports swap still in use even though not ALL ram is in use.

mail-hostname:~# free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 514320 502824 11496 0 103912 265736
-/+ buffers/cache: 133176 381144
Swap: 248996 64244 184752

I want to freeup the swap space so that the monitoring scripts report properly !!

Any ideas how to fix this problem ??

jailbait · 12-28-2003, 02:26 PM

" free reports swap still in use even though not ALL ram is in use."

This is normal. Somtimes swap uses idle time to copy things to swap in preparation for busier times ahead.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

loonix · 12-28-2003, 05:10 PM

Thanks for replying but it never seems to change. There is the exact same amount of swap used for past month. Even know ram usage jumps up and down. If I reboot the box it is ok then. I dont think it is any leak cause RAM free's up ok.