[ale] top and SWAP

[JK]

Warren Myers wrote:
> the man page for top says that the 'swap' field indicates "the swapped out
> portion of a task's total virtual memory image"

True. But "swapped out" is a logical concept -- for a particular
virtual page to be "swapped out" just means that the page is
not physically present in RAM, and that *something* has to
be done to acquire the page if it is accessed.  It does not
necessarily mean that a physical page has been written out
to a swap partition.

(This is just a fact about the Linux VM system, not a
universal truth about swapping.)

-- JK

-- 
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be
dismissed without evidence." -- Christopher Hitchens