# Swap space problem

**URL:** <https://community.unix.com/t/swap-space-problem/196290>\
**Category:** UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users\
**Created:** [May 9, 2008, 4:04am UTC](https://community.unix.com/t/swap-space-problem/196290 "2008-05-09T04:04:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![veccinho](https://community.unix.com/letter_avatar/veccinho/32/5_5575768a8748004e209b776fc1b2916d.png) [@veccinho](https://community.unix.com/u/veccinho)\
**Post date:** [May 9, 2008, 4:04am UTC](https://community.unix.com/t/swap-space-problem/196290/1 "2008-05-09T04:04:12Z")

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Hy!  
Recently i had a problem with one of mine Tru64 machines.  
It started to kill processes because of low amount of swap space. It said that it went below 10 %.  
But when i ran swapon -s it said:  
In-use space: 12 %

So, the system couldn't accept any new ssh connections plus it killed most of active ssh connections.  
First thing taht i did, i restarted inetd and sshd and it solved the problem.  
But i still don't know why and how it happened.  
I had no swap problems so far with this machine.

The meachine has 2 GB of RAM and 4 GB of swap space which is never utilized more than 14 %.

Any ideas?

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**Author:** ![lechuga](https://community.unix.com/user_avatar/community.unix.com/lechuga/32/782_2.png) [@lechuga](https://community.unix.com/u/lechuga)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2008, 9:15am UTC](https://community.unix.com/t/swap-space-problem/196290/2 "2008-05-26T09:15:40Z")

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May you have many processes running as root, and these processes request more cpu and more memory and more and more ...