5.7. Adding Virtual Memory
As explained in the introduction, virtual memory is used when the processes running on your system need to use more memory than is physically installed. Because not all processes run at the same time, those that are inactive can be safely swapped out to virtual memory and then swapped back in again when they need to run. Because disks are far slower than RAM, however, the constant swapping in and out (known as thrashing) will slow the system to a crawl if processes on your system use up too much memory.
Files in an existing local filesystem as well as entire partitions can be used for virtual memory. Using a partition is almost always faster, but can be inflexible if you have no free partitions on your hard disk. A ...
Get Managing Linux® Systems with Webmin™ System Administration and Module Development now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
