[SOLVED] Why is the swap used even when there is free memory?

[ricard]

On my Debian Linux system (Linux 2.6.32) it looks like the swap is being used even though the system has plenty of free memory.

The output from the 'free' command right now is:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2018208    1004984    1013224          0      21856   416768
-/+ buffers/cache:     566360    1451848
Swap:      4220920      71320    4149600

One thing though, I recently killed Firefox and restarted it, I wonder if that might account for the large amount of free memory at this point in time?

[oz]

Hello

Yes, killing Firefox could definitely play a part in it. You can check the last paragraph in the following article for a brief explanation:

Linux System Administrator's Guide - Using a swap space

If needed, more detailed information can be found with a bit of online searching.