Thank you all for the responses (sorry it's taken me so long to get back, I've been out of the office). We tried the changes below and (doing a re-mkswap and upping the priority)(we even did "mkswap -c" to check for disk errors) and so far can't see any real change. 90% of the memory is used with 0% of swap. Don't know what's up, but it's really weird. Thanks for the responses though. - Matt Timothy Writer wrote: > P <xflys@carolina.net> writes: > > >>On Friday 30 August 2002 07:42 pm, Timothy Writer wrote: >> >>>Matt Fahrner <Matt.Fahrner@coat.com> writes: >>> >>>>Does anyone know why a Linux box that is low on memory would choose to >>>>not use swap? We have a couple of RedHat linux boxes that seem to choose >>>>to run out of memory before they'll use swap. They aren't even using the >>>>same kernel. >>>> >>>> >>>>As an example, one of the boxes is RedHat 7.1 running a stock >>>>"2.4.9-21smp" kernel. It's swap partition is: >>>> >>>> >>>> Filename Type Size Used Priority >>>> /dev/sda10 partition 1036152 4 -1 >>> >>>According to "man swapon", priority is a value between 0 and 32767. I >>>suspect -1 means the swap area isn't being used. Did you mkswap(8) on it? >> >>It's interesting that I have the same observation on rh 7.3 ... whenever I've >>observed my swap activity, it's always zero. > > > Here's a RH 7.3 system with three swap areas: > > Filename Type Size Used Priority > /dev/hda2 partition 1048816 0 10 > /dev/hdc2 partition 1048816 0 10 > /dev/sda2 partition 1052216 65036 20 > > And in /etc/fstab, I have: > > /dev/hda2 swap swap pri=10 0 0 > /dev/hdc2 swap swap pri=10 0 0 > /dev/sda2 swap swap pri=20 0 0 > > >>But, your question about executing "mkswap" implies that the user is >>supposed to do this ... I don't understand that, since the swap is set up >>during installation, and supposedly the boot script enables it every time >>you start. > > > Right. The installation _should_ run mkswap on any partitions you configured > as swap and add them to /etc/fstab with entries similar to those above. The > boot scripts run "swapon -a" which enables every swap partition listed in > /etc/fstab. > > >>Why is it necessary for a user to do "mkswap" and or "swapon" if the >>installation went ok? > > > Normally, it's not. But it's possible something went wrong during the > installation. There's no harm in doing it yourself. Try the following > (as root): > > # swapoff -a > # mkswap /dev/sda10 > > Now edit /etc/fstab to check and correct the swap entry > for /dev/sda10 > > # swapon -a > > Hopefully, this will solve your problem. > -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Matt Fahrner 2 South Park St. Manager of Networking Willis House Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Lebanon, N.H. 03766 TEL: (603) 448-4100 xt 5150 USA FAX: (603) 443-6190 Matt.Fahrner@COAT.COM --------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Redhat-devel-list mailing list Redhat-devel-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-devel-list
