when is swap allocated

["Brian J. Stults" <bs7452@csc.albany.edu>]

I was just wondering when/why swap space is used.  I rooted around a bit
in the various sources of documentation, but didn't find what I was
looking for.  The reason I ask is that swap is very rarely used on my
system.  Most of the time, the results of "free" look like this:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers    
cached
Mem:        128300     125204       3096      91920       2784     
61060
-/+ buffers/cache:      61360      66940
Swap:       273024       4344     268680


Maybe I should be glad that there is little need on my system for swap,
but I'm a little surprised and worried that something is not set
properly.


Thanks.
-- 

Brian J. Stults
Doctoral Candidate
Department of Sociology
University at Albany - SUNY
Phone: (518) 442-4652  Fax: (518) 442-4936
Web: www.albany.edu/~bs7452