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Why is my server using all my Swap but I have RAM to spare? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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This is an old desktop I use for some small self hosting services. I never use all my RAM and I don't see any RAM spikes other than when I install/compile things which I haven't done in months. I restarted the machine a couple of times, but the SWAP will eventually go right back up to 100%.

I have an Ubuntu server/yunohost setup and found: https://askubuntu.com/questions/157793/why-is-swap-being-used-even-though-i-have-plenty-of-free-ram

My cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness value is indeed 60. Im not sure what would reduce the SWAP space usage.

Would changing this swappiness value help? Anyone come across this issue before?

EDIT: Found out what it is, its the matrix server that is running on the system. Its taking up a significant amount of swap. Found out via:

smem -s swap -r -p

turning that off, the system is now using 90% less SWAP. /opt/yunohost/matrix-synaps was the process.

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[–] 10 points 1 year ago*

32GB of swap is huge, I wouldn't bother with that much unless you're suspending to disk regularly. I personally just suspend to RAM and call it a day.

On my laptop with 24GB RAM, I have about 20GB swap, which matches the system memory (rest is dedicated to my APU). On my desktop with 16GB RAM, I have 16GB swap, because that's what my OS picked (I would otherwise go with 10GB). On both systems, I usually only have 2-3GB in swap anyway.

On my server, I have no swap at all and 16GB RAM (usually use <5GB at any time). I think swap is overrated and overused. If your swap is being used a lot, buy more RAM, it's cheap and a much better experience.

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