Ask Klaus!

Ask Klaus!

Article from Issue 145/2012
Author(s):

Klaus Knopper answers your Linux questions

Swap

Hello, Klaus: My question is about processes that are occupying swap. When a Linux system has occupied swap, I haven't found any way to discover what process is causing it.

I've been looking for but have not found any solution that works correctly. Some people say that the value for the process occupying swap can be found in /proc/<num_proc>/status (the VmSwap line), but the VmSwap line does not exist in this file.

Others say that you can search in /proc/<num_proc>/smaps (the Swap line), but the value is always 0, and the line doesn't exist for some distributions, such as SUSE.

[...]

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