Re: Swap space not used
On Wed, 2 May 2012, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
Date: Wed, 2 May 2012 17:27:42
From: Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com>
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Swap space not used
On Mi, 02 mai 12, 15:48:30, Bret Busby wrote:
Hello.
I am running Debian 6.
When I installed it, I had a swap partition of about 40GB set up, as
is shown by gparted.
four zero Gigabytes? My / + /home are only 27GB :)
But, for some strnge reason, Debian 6will not use the swap space,
even though gparted shows it to be "Active".
Instead of Debian 6 using the swap[ partition, it just runs out of
memory, progressively, requiring rebooting every few days.
Please show the output of 'free', 'cat /etc/fstab' and 'fdisk -l' (the
last one will need root).
Kind regards,
Andrei
--
fstab:
"
:~# cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=367ac9bc-7790-47b7-aa61-2242b283a9bd / ext3
errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /home was on /dev/sda8 during installation
UUID=a3074725-349d-4647-8b07-3a5526f7ee55 /home ext3
defaults 0 2
# swap was on /dev/sda7 during installation
UUID=dd1aaec4-3b27-4144-a1e3-7b97a75130d3 none swap sw
0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
"
free:
"
:~# free
total used free shared buffers
cached
Mem: 8059964 7746808 313156 0 54708
1352976
-/+ buffers/cache: 6339124 1720840
Swap: 42860340 66296 42794044
"
fdisk -l :
"
:~# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 640.1 GB, 640135028736 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77825 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc0000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 9 72261 de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 10 1134 9029632 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 1134 11352 82082604 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 11353 77825 533944342 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 11353 21733 83385351 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 * 21734 31931 81915403+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 31932 37267 42860351+ 82 Linux swap /
Solaris
/dev/sda8 42131 52329 81923436 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 52330 62527 81915403+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 62528 72726 81923436 83 Linux
/dev/sda11 72727 77825 40957686 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda12 37267 42130 39061504 83 Linux
Partition table entries are not in disk order
Disk /dev/sdf: 499.4 GB, 499405291520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60715 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000f8373
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdf1 1 60716 487699456 7 HPFS/NTFS
"
Someone said something about memtest;
"
:~# memtest
-su: memtest: command not found
"
A snaphot of the header of top gives
"
:~# top
top - 02:31:37 up 3 days, 44 min, 3 users, load average: 0.09, 0.17,
0.16
Tasks: 205 total, 2 running, 203 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 24.3%us, 2.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 73.1%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si,
0.0%st
Mem: 8059964k total, 7722984k used, 336980k free, 55484k buffers
Swap: 42860340k total, 66296k used, 42794044k free, 1353544k cached
"
The computer has Windows 7 Professional, Ubuntu 11.04 and Debian 6
installed, each in the 64 bit version opf the respective operating
system, and uses GRUB as the boot selector (I use the term "boot
selector", as it does not have multiple booting; to me, "multiple
booting" means booting muliple systems at the same time, and, if I could
run all of the operating systems at once, I think that I would need
VMWare or something similar)
The computer has 8GB of RAM, and I have found that the tendency of web
site develpoers, is increased sloppiness, as too many web site
developers appear to work on the principle that computers have an
infinite amount of RAM for them to squander.
When previously running Debian 5 on an AMD K6 (from memory) based
machine with 2GB of RAM, if the swap was not working, and the RAM usage
was getting high, if I ran an application such as the GIMP or, I think,
the Opera web browser, and then closed the application, it would
kickstart the swapping, but that does not work on Debian 6; it seems
instead to progressively increase the RAM usage until it crashes,
without swapping memory.
At present, the applet for the System Monitor, shows for the memory
usage, "78% in use by programs, 15% in use as cache", and the Swap Space
shows "0% in use".
My past exprience has been (with previous versions of Debian) that
memory swapping should be occurring, when memory usage gets to about 50
or 60%. I may be wrong in that, but, surely, it should not be that, with
93% memory usage, no significant swapping is occurring.
--
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............
"So once you do know what the question actually is,
you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
A Trilogy In Four Parts",
written by Douglas Adams,
published by Pan Books, 1992
....................................................
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