Linux and Open Source Blog

  • Home
  • WordPress Plugins
  • About
  • Contact

All About Linux Swap Space

Posted on December 4, 2007 by Linewbie.com Posted in linux and open source blog, linux/unix/os distros, news .

When your computer needs to run programs that are bigger than your available physical memory, most modern operating systems use a technique called swapping, in which chunks of memory are temporarily stored on the hard disk while other data is moved into physical memory space. Here are some techniques that may help you better manage swapping on Linux systems and get the best performance from the Linux swapping subsystem.

Linux divides its physical RAM (random access memory) into chucks of memory called pages. Swapping is the process whereby a page of memory is copied to the preconfigured space on the hard disk, called swap space, to free up that page of memory. The combined sizes of the physical memory and the swap space is the amount of virtual memory available.

Swapping is necessary for two important reasons. First, when the system requires more memory than is physically available, the kernel swaps out less used pages and gives memory to the current application (process) that needs the memory immediately. Second, a significant number of the pages used by an application during its startup phase may only be used for initialization and then never used again. The system can swap out those pages and free the memory for other applications or even for the disk cache.

Complete Article

« Banter – Next-Gen Realtime Collaboration Client
AnySIM Creators Considering Open-Sourcing »

Leave a comment

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

  • Does an un-confirmed Bitcoin transaction expire?
  • Looting of the Fox: The Story of Sabotage at ShapeShift
  • Decentralization, Scalability, and Fault Tolerance of Bitcoin
  • Stripe will soon accept Bitcoin payments
  • Zynga announces Bitcoin acceptance in game
  • How to import very large sql dump via phpmyadmin
  • How to compare the content of two folders automatically
  • Top 5 reasons to start experimenting with Linux
  • The day our mind became open sourced
  • Mark Shuttleworth wants to turn canonical (ubuntu) into the next Apple Inc.

Categories

  • applications/software (26)
    • browsers (2)
    • development (1)
    • information management (1)
    • Mobility (1)
    • multimedia (5)
    • office suites (2)
    • security (6)
    • servers (6)
    • system (2)
  • audio/video/pics (3)
  • Bitcoin (3)
  • books & literature (1)
  • cms/portals (1)
  • desktop environments (7)
    • gnome (2)
    • kde (5)
  • events/shows (3)
    • interviews (1)
    • people (1)
    • surveys (1)
  • games & gaming (2)
  • general topics (4)
  • guides (112)
    • how to (105)
    • tips (87)
    • tutorials (86)
  • hardware (8)
    • desktop & laptop pc (5)
    • gadgets & mobiles (2)
  • howtoforge (47)
  • internet/web (4)
    • design & development (2)
  • linux and open source blog (49)
  • linux.com (76)
  • linux/unix/os distros (113)
    • debian/ubuntu based (10)
    • mac/osx (2)
    • other distros (3)
  • news (217)
  • open source (8)
    • business & foss (2)
  • other (26)
    • uncategorized (26)
  • Programming (3)
    • PHP (2)
  • quotes & thoughts (10)
  • random stuff (4)
    • cool stuff (3)
    • funny stuff (1)
  • review/preview/tests (7)
  • wordpress/blogging (3)

Archives

  • July 2016
  • April 2016
  • January 2015
  • April 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • February 2013
  • November 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • August 2011
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2006

Recent Posts

  • Does an un-confirmed Bitcoin transaction expire?
  • Looting of the Fox: The Story of Sabotage at ShapeShift
  • Decentralization, Scalability, and Fault Tolerance of Bitcoin
  • Stripe will soon accept Bitcoin payments
  • Zynga announces Bitcoin acceptance in game
  • How to import very large sql dump via phpmyadmin
  • How to compare the content of two folders automatically
  • Top 5 reasons to start experimenting with Linux
  • The day our mind became open sourced
  • Mark Shuttleworth wants to turn canonical (ubuntu) into the next Apple Inc.

Categories

  • applications/software (26)
    • browsers (2)
    • development (1)
    • information management (1)
    • Mobility (1)
    • multimedia (5)
    • office suites (2)
    • security (6)
    • servers (6)
    • system (2)
  • audio/video/pics (3)
  • Bitcoin (3)
  • books & literature (1)
  • cms/portals (1)
  • desktop environments (7)
    • gnome (2)
    • kde (5)
  • events/shows (3)
    • interviews (1)
    • people (1)
    • surveys (1)
  • games & gaming (2)
  • general topics (4)
  • guides (112)
    • how to (105)
    • tips (87)
    • tutorials (86)
  • hardware (8)
    • desktop & laptop pc (5)
    • gadgets & mobiles (2)
  • howtoforge (47)
  • internet/web (4)
    • design & development (2)
  • linux and open source blog (49)
  • linux.com (76)
  • linux/unix/os distros (113)
    • debian/ubuntu based (10)
    • mac/osx (2)
    • other distros (3)
  • news (217)
  • open source (8)
    • business & foss (2)
  • other (26)
    • uncategorized (26)
  • Programming (3)
    • PHP (2)
  • quotes & thoughts (10)
  • random stuff (4)
    • cool stuff (3)
    • funny stuff (1)
  • review/preview/tests (7)
  • wordpress/blogging (3)

Archives

  • July 2016
  • April 2016
  • January 2015
  • April 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • February 2013
  • November 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • August 2011
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2006
Privacy Policy

Est. 2002

linewbie.com serving the linux and open source community since April 09, 2002

CyberChimps WordPress Themes

© Linux and Open Source Blog