Linux swap space, linux swap

Linux swap space, linux swap

Swap space has two forms: swap partition and swap file. In short, the read and write operations on it are disk operations.

Linux memory manages the entire memory through the virtual memory. The virtual memory manages the physical memory and swap space.

 

Swap partition, that is, Swap zone. The role of Swap space can be simply described as: when the physical memory of the system is insufficient, a part of the physical memory needs to be released, for the currently running program. The released space may come from some programs that haven't been operated for a long time. The released space is temporarily saved to the Swap space and will be executed by those programs, then, the stored data is restored from Swap to the memory. In this way, the system always performs Swap switching when the physical memory is insufficient. In fact, Swap adjustment is crucial to the performance of Linux servers, especially Web servers. By adjusting Swap, the system performance bottleneck is sometimes crossed to save system upgrade costs.