system not swapping

[Eric Storch]

I am not sure why but my system is not swapping.

When I run swapon -s it shows:
Filename                                Type            Size    Used  
 Priority/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol01         partition      
2031608 0       -9

When I run free -m it shows:
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1003        986         16          0         81        450
-/+ buffers/cache:        454        548
Swap:         1983          0       1983

The really odd thing here is when I open a terminal i get:

bash: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
bash-3.00$

How can I force the kernel to swap?
uname -a shows :
2.6.11-1.27_FC3 #1 Tue May 17 20:27:37 EDT 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
any info is good info, and thanks.

[Jeff Vian]

On Wed, 2005-06-01 at 11:43 -0500, Eric Storch wrote:
> I am not sure why but my system is not swapping.
>
> When I run swapon -s it shows:
> Filename                                Type            Size    Used  
>  Priority/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol01         partition      
> 2031608 0       -9
>
> When I run free -m it shows:
>              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> Mem:          1003        986         16          0         81        450
> -/+ buffers/cache:        454        548
> Swap:         1983          0       1983

That does not look strange, except the priority of the swap is not the
same as mine.

--------------------------------------
[jeff@eye_gore ~]$ swapon -s
Filename                                Type            Size    Used
Priority/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol02         partition       1048568
0       -1
[jeff@eye_gore ~]$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers
cached
Mem:          1265        564        700          0         34
297
-/+ buffers/cache:        233       1032
Swap:         1023          0       1023
----------------------------------------

You have 1 GB memory and 2 GB swap.   Until just a short time ago I was
using 512MB memory and 1 GB swap.  Even with that small a memory amount
of memory my system never used swap.

I would not expect swapping to occur unless you have something running
that is highly memory intensive (a large database app, or something
similar that uses a lot of memory at times).
> The really odd thing here is when I open a terminal i get:
> bash: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
> bash-3.00$

That seems strange but is not likely swap related.
> How can I force the kernel to swap?
> uname -a shows :
> 2.6.11-1.27_FC3 #1 Tue May 17 20:27:37 EDT 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
> any info is good info, and thanks.

I don't think this is a swap issue.  It may be something else.

[jludwig]

On Wednesday 01 June 2005 12:43 pm, Eric Storch wrote:
> I am not sure why but my system is not swapping.
>
> When I run swapon -s it shows:
> Filename                                Type            Size    Used
>  Priority/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol01         partition
> 2031608 0       -9
>
> When I run free -m it shows:
>              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> Mem:          1003        986         16          0         81        450
> -/+ buffers/cache:        454        548
> Swap:         1983          0       1983
>
> The really odd thing here is when I open a terminal i get:
>
> bash: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
> bash-3.00$
>
> How can I force the kernel to swap?
> uname -a shows :
> 2.6.11-1.27_FC3 #1 Tue May 17 20:27:37 EDT 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
> any info is good info, and thanks.

If I am reading this correctly you are running 1Gbyte of memory.
Your systen may never use swap, mine normally doesn't with 512Mbytes.