[svlug] Confused about swap partitions

[Karen Shaeffer]

On Fri, Sep 30, 2005 at 09:27:21AM -0700, Joe Buck wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 30, 2005 at 09:11:46AM -0600, Skip Evans wrote:
> > 
> > ...but what I'm confused about is that swap 
> > doesn't seem to show up as an actual partition like:
> > 
> > /swap
> 
> That's right.  If it had a path, you could put files in it
> or read files from it, and you can do neither.  The swap
> partition is not part of the filesystem tree.
> 
> Swap partitions do show up in /etc/fstab, though it is possible
> for a partition listed as swap in /etc/fstab to be inactive.
> The "swapon" program enables swap, and "swapon -a" activates
> all swap partitions mentioned in /etc/fstab.
> Read "man fstab" for details.

Beyond that good advice...

The free utility, "man free", displays the total amount of
free and used swap memory that is currently under the control of
the running kernel.

Thanks,
Karen
-- 
 Karen Shaeffer
 Neuralscape, Palo Alto, Ca. 94306
 shaeffer at neuralscape.com  http://www.neuralscape.com