up vote 0 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

OK, here's what's going on.

I've got a RedHat 5 server with a swap partition (/dev/sda3) that's 3GB.

For some reason swap memory is still being taken up on / (/dev/sda2), and fills up the drive on occasion. Is there a way I can tell my system that if it needs to use HD space for swap, to use a different drive?

link|improve this question
67% accept rate
Are you sure that swap is filling up /, and not temporary files (or log files, or something else)? – mattdm Apr 7 '11 at 15:40
feedback

2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

To find really what is using your space, use df to see the partition layout and disk usage, and du / -h --max-depth=1 to get an estimative of directory sizes and from that see what is happening.

Also, swapon -s will show exactly what swap devices are being used and how much of each one is occupied.

link|improve this answer
I've done searches for large files, tmp files, and even moved some larger stuff off the partition to another one. Space keeps filling up. After a fresh reboot I get the space back, then it fills up again eventually. – rkalajian Apr 7 '11 at 15:15
@rkalajian That sounds like /tmp or some kind of logfile, not swap. Do you have tmpfs or ramfs? Add the output of your df to your question. – coredump Apr 7 '11 at 15:17
@coredump Logs are on a seperate partition, and /tmp is clean. 'df' shows: /dev/sda2,2972268,1933592,885256,69% / - /dev/sda,131581128,33872852,90916400,28%,r5 - /dev/sdb1,481711200,142404696,314442304,32%,/data2 - tmpfs,4155412,0,4155412,0%,/dev/shm – rkalajian Apr 7 '11 at 15:21
Yeah that output shows nothing really wrong. See if free is showing your swap enabled. – coredump Apr 7 '11 at 15:27
1  
You can also use files; you don't have to use partitions, and you don't have to use something like swapd to do so. – mattdm Apr 7 '11 at 15:37
show 2 more comments
feedback
up vote 3 down vote

Ignoring all the parts of your question that make no sense, you can use mkswap to format a device to use as swap, and you can use swapon to activate it. Add it to /etc/fstab if you want to make it permanent.

link|improve this answer
I've already got a swap device, and no means to add a new device for additional swap space right now. I'm looking into creating a swap file on an additional partition, but I need to know it'll take precedence over filling up / when the actual swap drive overflows. – rkalajian Apr 7 '11 at 15:26
1  
@rkalajian — look at man swapon for how to set the relative priority of your swap devices. (This can go in fstab, too.) – mattdm Apr 7 '11 at 15:39
@mattdm - That sounds like exactly what I need. – rkalajian Apr 7 '11 at 15:43
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.