kubuntu is not using any swap space!

[m1a1x1s]

I am completely new to linux and by some accident I ran the "top" command and while looking over the performance I noticed 2 things. 1. is that the RAM usage was extremely high. and 2. was that the one point something gb's i have of swap is not being used at all. here is what comes up when i use the "top" command.

top - 15:47:53 up 27 min, 1 user, load average: 0.84, 0.63, 0.49
Tasks: 130 total, 4 running, 124 sleeping, 0 stopped, 2 zombie
top - 15:49:54 up 29 min, 1 user, load average: 0.33, 0.48, 0.45
Tasks: 127 total, 1 running, 123 sleeping, 1 stopped, 2 zombie
Cpu(s): 1.0% us, 0.7% sy, 0.0% ni, 98.0% id, 0.0% wa, 0.3% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 508124k total, 500544k used, 7580k free, 58372k buffers
Swap: 1485972k total, 4k used, 1485968k free, 197452k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
5150 root 15 0 288m 25m 4784 S 1.0 5.1 0:54.19 Xorg
7013 root 16 0 2196 1144 860 R 0.3 0.2 0:01.29 top
1 root 16 0 1568 528 460 S 0.0 0.1 0:01.06 init
2 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
3 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
4 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.16 events/0
5 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
6 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthread
8 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.50 kblockd/0
9 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
144 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush
145 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 pdflush
147 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/0
146 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.04 kswapd0
740 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kseriod
1757 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.06 ata/0
1758 root 11 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ata_hotplug/0
1759 root 11 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_0
1766 root 11 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_1
1867 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd
1885 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khpsbpkt
1915 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 knodemgrd_0
1996 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.06 kjournald
2230 root 12 -4 2432 920 368 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.21 udevd
3085 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 shpchpd_event
3185 root 19 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pccardd
3186 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ipw2200/0
3190 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 mmcqd
3638 dhcp 13 -2 2336 548 244 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 dhclient3
3977 root 16 0 2156 1196 644 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 acpid
4095 root 16 0 1680 496 412 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.02 dd
4097 klog 17 0 2420 1348 388 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.04 klogd
4122 hplip 15 0 12872 920 696 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 hpiod

[sonofmoog]

Re: kubuntu is not using any swap space!

I am completely new to linux and by some accident I ran the "top" command and while looking over the performance I noticed 2 things. 1. is that the RAM usage was extremely high. and 2. was that the one point something gb's i have of swap is not being used at all. here is what comes up when i use the "top" command.

None of this is especially unusual. Linux in general tends to use more memory and less swap than other OSes. And, when you think about it, you want it that way: Memory is faster than disk, so the more you can run from RAM, the faster your machine will seem, and unused memory is wasted memory ..

HTH

[aysiu]

Re: kubuntu is not using any swap space!

If your Kubuntu is using swap, it means you need more RAM. Swap is sort of a last resort, and it's much slower than RAM.

[Xena]

Re: kubuntu is not using any swap space!

This has been answered before.

linux is not the same as windows. windows likes to keep RAM free because everyone looks at the free RAM and thinks, wow, so much free RAM, isn't this great. But how is the RAM being freed? By dumping to harddrive.

Access time for hard drive: 10ms.
Access time for RAM: 10ns. That's a speed factor of about a thousand, minimum.

linux keeps things that you have used in RAM until the RAM is actually full, at which point it then dumps the RAM to hard drive. What this means is, the things you use most often and are likely to use next, are in RAM, where it can be got at quickly, instead of on a hard drive, where it is slow.

I won't say which I think is most efficient, but put it this way, if your RAM isn't being used.... why's it there for

[m1a1x1s]

Re: kubuntu is not using any swap space!

Ok so my swap is fine then right? I just want to make sure that when it NEEDS to be used that it can be and I won't get errors of not enough memory being used. Thanks for the quick responses guys/(gals?) If it weren't for this forum i would have a lot harder time making the switch from the good 'ol win world to "grass is greener on the other side" linux

[Xena]

Re: kubuntu is not using any swap space!

How much swap is enough is a good question.

As a rough rule of thumb, swap should be about two or three times your RAM. Minimum swap should be about 300 Mb, maximum probably 1Gb. I usually have 500Mb for swap.

You appear to have 1.4Gb for swap, am I right? Far more than enough. I can't see why you'd need more than 500Mb for swap, and I run quite a few applications, often at once, and some are quite demanding.

My advice: set 600-700Mb swap and forget all about it.

Naturally you should install as much RAM as you can, if you have 256Mb, going to 512Mb might be noticeable (I have 2Gb in one 'puter but there's damn all difference compared to when it "only" had 1Gb.)

I'd suggest a bare minimum of 512Mb RAM, 1Gb ideal.

Hope that helps.

And yes, gal

[m1a1x1s]

Re: kubuntu is not using any swap space!

ok thanks for the advice...i think i'll just keep the 1gb since i have the space and just upgrade to 1gb of ram