Why is swap usage stay zero always?

Question

I created swap file using this tutorial (https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-add-swap-on-ubuntu-14-04) step by step. But swap usage is staying zero, always.

Here is monit status:

  memory usage                      1481664 kB [72.2%]
  swap usage                        0 kB [0.0%]

Which step should I follow? Any solution?

Answer 1

gparent February 13, 2015

You shouldn’t do anything. Everything is working as it should.

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ibrahimmumcu February 14, 2015

I dont think so. My droplet has been down because of the most ram usage. If swapping is working that shouldn’t be happened.
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gparent February 15, 2015

Let’s start with the basics then. Does the swap file appear when you type swapon -s ? If it is enabled there and has a size above 0, then it should be working, regardless of what else is happening on your droplet.

Can you show us the output of free -h ?

Of course you should resize your droplet if you’re running out of memory and can’t find an abnormal reason why.
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Answer 2

ibrahimmumcu February 14, 2015

I dont think so. My droplet has been down because of the most ram usage. If swapping is working that shouldn’t be happened.
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gparent February 15, 2015

Let’s start with the basics then. Does the swap file appear when you type swapon -s ? If it is enabled there and has a size above 0, then it should be working, regardless of what else is happening on your droplet.

Can you show us the output of free -h ?

Of course you should resize your droplet if you’re running out of memory and can’t find an abnormal reason why.
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Answer 3

GustavoGomez February 13, 2015

What is your vm.swappiness config?

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ibrahimmumcu February 14, 2015
I check this with following code:

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

Gives me “10”. Like I said before I followed tutorial step by step.
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GustavoGomez February 14, 2015

The less the swappiness the less the kernel will try to use swap. So, don’t worry, if you want to test swap is working well try to make an agressive use of the server to increment the RAM use, so the swap will begin to be used too.
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ibrahimmumcu February 14, 2015

2 days ago the site that I’ve tested swap get lots of user and I check the memory usage is more than 70%; the swap still zero. That’s the point, right?
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Answer 4

ibrahimmumcu February 14, 2015
I check this with following code:

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

Gives me “10”. Like I said before I followed tutorial step by step.
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GustavoGomez February 14, 2015

The less the swappiness the less the kernel will try to use swap. So, don’t worry, if you want to test swap is working well try to make an agressive use of the server to increment the RAM use, so the swap will begin to be used too.
Reply Report
ibrahimmumcu February 14, 2015

2 days ago the site that I’ve tested swap get lots of user and I check the memory usage is more than 70%; the swap still zero. That’s the point, right?
Reply Report