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Date:      Fri, 19 Dec 2008 09:48:40 -0600
From:      Kirk Strauser <kirk@strauser.com>
To:        FreeBSD Questions ML <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: SOLVED: Simple swap question
Message-ID:  <6FE28B07-0ACF-4185-A01C-3FA929148F3C@strauser.com>
In-Reply-To: <494BBFCA.5060305@optiksecurite.com>
References:  <494A693A.5050204@optiksecurite.com> <200812181028.18306.kirk@strauser.com> <20081218163632.GE5150@torus.slightlystrange.org> <494A820E.2030907@optiksecurite.com> <20081219040719.GA83557@gizmo.acns.msu.edu> <494BBFCA.5060305@optiksecurite.com>

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On Dec 19, 2008, at 9:37 AM, FreeBSD wrote:

> Because this server is monitored by Nagios and it emails me every  
> hour a warning because the swap is not 100% free (I know it's pretty  
> extreme, but I want to know if the system is swapping).

Martin,

I'm not trying to be harsh, honestly, but stop doing things like that  
until you understand them.  FreeBSD will *copy* (not *move*, but  
*copy*) stuff to swap as it sees fit.  I have 6GB of RAM in my home  
server, and at this moment "top" says this:

Mem: 1060M Active, 1712M Inact, 549M Wired, 5352K Cache, 214M Buf,  
2600M Free
Swap: 16G Total, 3068K Used, 16G Free

I know for a fact that I've never used 100% of the RAM since the last  
reboot, but it's still played around with 3MB of swap.  This is not  
hurting anything, and absolutely is *not* an indication that anything  
is wrong or sub-optimal.

Seriously, get over your obsession with keeping swap utterly empty  
before it drives you nuts.  FreeBSD isn't designed to work that way  
and you'll be fighting it for no good reason whatsoever.
-- 
Kirk Strauser






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