adamw’s very own blog

Lazyweb, oh lazyweb…

I still don’t really understand how Linux handles swap space. One thing in particular irritates the hell out of me. I have 1.5GB of RAM, but I still occasionally manage to wind up using it all, just for a brief time while I’m running a lot of stuff, and then things start to swap.

This is fine.

What I DON’T understand is why, when I quit a bunch of apps and bring conventional RAM usage down to comfortably below maximum, this swap space is STILL used. And I still hear the telltale hard drive clicking which tells me stuff is still swapping.

I mean, look at my htop right now:

Mem[|||||||||||||||||||1044/1510MB]
Swp[|||||||||||| 435/1153MB]

There’s 450MB of system RAM sitting there doing nothing. *Why* is there still 435MB of swap space being used?

I just don’t get this. Can someone smart please explain it to me?