Page table content when the physical page we are looking for is in swap area

Question

If this question depends on the linux distribution, please answer it in a "general way" (i.e. the most common implementation on linux distributions).

In the page table of a process we can find the physical direction where the page we are looking for is mapped in main memory or a pointer to disk if the page we are looking for isn't present in main memory and we have to catch it from the disk. But my question is: if the page we are looking for is placed in the swap area, what will we find on the page table of that process? We will find a pointer to disk (but pointing to the page in the swap area) or will we find a physical direction but being this physical direction a "virtual direction" which makes mainMemory + swapArea a unified memory (i.e. if we have 16GB main memory + 2GB swap memory we can see in the page table that the page we are looking for is in the direction X (being X a direction that corresponds to 17GB) and this mean that we will find it in the swap memory (because is >16GB the direction)) ? Remember that we are suposing 16GB main memory + 2GB swap memory.

Answer 1

The page table entry for a page which is swapped out contains bits to indicate that fact (at least one; the details depend on the architecture), and a two-part pointer to the information describing the swapped page. Each swap device or file has a corresponding swap_info structure, and each of those has a map which links a page table entry to a location in the swap device or file.

See How does the kernel address swapped memory pages on swap partition\file? and the “Swap Management” chapter of Mel Gorman’s Understanding the Linux Virtual Memory Manager for details.