Swap can be used even when RAM is still free
An old laptop server has only 2 GB of RAM, but swap is being used heavily even though RAM has not filled up. RAM usage never reached the full 2 GB, so the behavior does not match the simple idea that swap is only an overflow space used after RAM runs out. The real question is whether the server is actually short on memory, or whether the has moved some less-used data into swap while keeping RAM available.
Key points
- The server has 2 GB of RAM.
- Swap is being used even though RAM did not fully fill up.
- The confusion comes from swap is only used after RAM is exhausted.
- For a small , watch and swap trends together.