Swap partition exists, Not being used

initialdrifteg6 · 03-02-2005, 03:01 PM

I am running debian sarge net installer on a 100GB HDD

hda1 = windows partition = ntfs
hda2 = linux / partition = ext3
hda3 = swap partition = swap

My problem is that though this swap partition exists, there is only about 1MB of it being used. I got this information under gnome's system monitor tool. I have 1GB of memory (only displaying 885MB of it... i enabled 4GB Highmem support, but still don't get the extra memory) but i'm thinking that the swap partition should be used because the physical memory is constantly used usually up to 97%... so 880 of 885MB is being used all the time.. even on a fresh reboot.

so if this is the case.. .why isn't the swap partition kickin in and why isn't linux taking advantage of a 2gb swap??

thanks in advanced

acid_kewpie · 03-02-2005, 03:27 PM

you have a gig of ram, and wonder why it doesn't use the swap??

the answer is.. you have a gig of ram!

linux uses a full memory model, meaning don't remove old stuff from ram unless you need to space. run "free" and you'll see....

Code:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        256052     248492       7560          0      16548      96004
-/+ buffers/cache:     135940     120112
Swap:       684888     149368     535520

here i have 256M of memory, and 248M is being accounted for by linux. however only 135M is being used actively and the other 120M is full of old data that might well be used in the future. why not?

there is no benefit in placing this old data in swap, or keeping it there in the first place, so it just won't get used.

initialdrifteg6 · 03-02-2005, 03:44 PM

ah... so more or less... i was under the assumption that even though it said that i had 3% physicall memory free.... i thought that it meant that yea.. i had only 3% ram left.... hrmm. interesting... but look where i'm comin from... it would make a valid question though for someone who didn't know that... 1gb... err.. 885mb ram being used... 0 swap being used... so yea... thanks for the input... anyone else's ideas or agreements are also welcome

acid_kewpie · 03-02-2005, 03:52 PM

hehe, people can agree all they want, it won't stop being true!

Yeah, it's a pretty common question and i can see why it could be confusing, and seems to annoy some people... but you paid for the memory, why not try to get the most out of it?

amosf · 03-02-2005, 04:04 PM

Yeah. Linux uses all the ram. I says, you paid for it, I'll use it for something. So any ram that is not in an app it uses for cache and buffers. I t wan't use swap until the ram is really used up...

This question comes up a couple of times a week I think