4

This is not so much a performance problem as it is a desire to understand what is happening and how it works. I have a system with lots of resources, including 128 GB of RAM. What I have discovered (which happens every time given enough up time) is that the system will start using the entire swap space available to it when there is still 86 GB of memory left.

Here is a screenshot of htop demonstrating the system state:

htop output

Swappiness is set to 5:

$ sysctl vm.swappiness
vm.swappiness = 5

vmstat shows mostly 0s, but one event:

$ vmstat 60                                                                                  
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ------cpu-----      
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa st      
 2  0 8305756 5218320  31872 83460448    0    0     0  1411 11432 17991  1  1 98  0  0
 2  0 8305616 5042872  31872 83571392   66    0  1193  2068 12097 18650  2  1 98  0  0

System details:

Key Value
Linux Distro Fedora 37
Kernel version 6.4.11-100.fc37.x86_64

Top processes using swap (sorted highest at the bottom)

    PID User     Command                         Swap      USS      PSS      RSS
...
2835417 ben      /usr/lib64/firefox/firefox     60104   703736   710125   818252 
2835448 ben      /usr/lib64/firefox/firefox     63260  1179992  1185457  1288392 
2833473 ben      /opt/google/chrome/chrome -    64748    32896    34897   146000 
3090226 100998   /usr/lib/chromium/chromium     67612   101820   104321   136248 
2835394 ben      /usr/lib64/firefox/firefox     72476  1177840  1187600  1295372 
12678 100998   /usr/local/bin/python /usr/    75788   330820   330927   332536 
3682935 ben      /opt/google/chrome/chrome -    87196   207280   210962   350268 
1516354 ben      /home/ben/.rubies/ruby-3.0.    91728    28868    29182    32820 
3621825 ben      /opt/google/chrome/chrome -   108724   175184   178064   310136 
2833257 ben      /opt/google/chrome/chrome     110132   513256   545048   710296 
599920 ben      /usr/lib64/erlang/erts-13.2   113620    27728    28951    34700 
1281109 ben      /opt/google/chrome/chrome -   139388    24860    27513   153668 
1013489 qemu     /usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64   774020 16138492 16138790 16150960 
1013519 root     /usr/libexec/virtiofsd --fd   816020       24      154     1880 
2863657 ben      /usr/lib/slack/slack         1504064   124068   143980   222196

EDIT - January 2024: Still don't have the answer, but adding some additional information that I've picked up from continued usage. The most common processes that seem to accumulate swap are usually the same, and are KVM/qemu related, and Google Chrome/Electron related

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5
  • Which distribution are you running? Which processes are using swap? (stackoverflow.com/questions/479953/…)
    – Panki
    Commented Sep 19, 2023 at 19:03
  • 1
    Some of the possibilities: some time earlier, there was a lack of RAM and stuff got swapped out (it won't get swapped back in, until needed). There was no large blocks available, and something needed a large block.
    – ctrl-alt-delor
    Commented Sep 19, 2023 at 19:51
  • Great questions, thanks, I added them to the bottom of the question
    – Freedom_Ben
    Commented Sep 19, 2023 at 22:21
  • Two links you may find useful, first one might explain why in your situation: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/678806/… the second one is evidence you do not need high usage to prompt swap, high disk IO can also trigger it unix.stackexchange.com/questions/499485/…
    – Philip Couling
    Commented Sep 19, 2023 at 22:55
  • To list what use the most RAM: for file in /proc/*/status ; do awk '/VmSwap|Name/{printf $2 " " $3}END{ print ""}' $file; done | sort -k 2 -n -r | less
    – Gilles Quénot
    Commented Sep 20, 2023 at 1:09

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
-4

Just remove the swap partitions and put them back. There is something in them that the kernel won't put into ram.

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2
  • Looks like a comment, not an answer. And removing swap is not recommended
    – Gilles Quénot
    Commented Sep 20, 2023 at 1:07
  • You have to. boot into init 1 and redo the swap partitions. When grub appears, hit e. Go to the end of the kernel line, and add /bin/bash
    – Brian
    Commented Sep 22, 2023 at 19:11

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