good morning to all and happy new year! i am facing the following situation; there is a server which is using 2-5GB of swap very often (almost all the time) and i cannot figure out why. i can provide any information you find useful and i will start what i think is more relevant to my 'problem'. -os -> CentOS release 5.6 (Final) -the server is a dedicated db server with nothing else running there -postgres version -> 9.0.5 -shared_buffers -> 15 GB -vm.swapiness = 0 free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 64445 61505 2940 0 159 59989 -/+ buffers/cache: 1356 63089 Swap: 32767 1868 30899 vmstat -n -S M 10 5 procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- -----cpu------ r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st 4 0 1867 1533 161 61345 0 0 682 164 0 0 9 1 86 4 0 1 0 1867 1286 161 61643 0 0 17932 3224 9776 9957 5 1 94 0 0 3 0 1867 1119 161 61802 0 0 12877 13080 3297 2580 5 1 95 0 0 2 0 1867 929 162 62006 0 0 12386 9406 5871 5749 5 1 94 0 0 3 0 1867 652 162 62190 0 0 13134 4912 6531 6157 8 1 91 0 0 as you can see from above the si/so are always 0 (i have run it for many iterations and they are always 0) so the system is not actively swapping, but still, why does it use the swap? i have found online in some relevant threads/articles that there are some operating systems that prefer to swap out the memory from the shared_buffers that is not used. as i can see when inspecting the pg_buffercache, there are 3-5 GB with usagecount=0. could this be the case? thx in advance for any advice -- View this message in context: http://postgresql.1045698.n5.nabble.com/system-is-swapping-not-actively-why-tp5116515p5116515.html Sent from the PostgreSQL - admin mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Sent via pgsql-admin mailing list (pgsql-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-admin