Sim, reduzi muito o vm.swappiness:
% sysctl -a | grep swap
vm.swappiness = 1
A memória é principalmente gratuita:
% cat /proc/meminfo | head
MemTotal: 8070592 kB
MemFree: 2619580 kB
ps_mem.py ( link ) mostra apenas 2,8 GB alocados, mas o sistema troca um lote:
% vmstat 2
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa
1 3 3673808 3034600 34924 723456 13 19 297 210 16 132 33 9 56 3
1 2 3671712 3027772 35984 721372 3248 0 4100 176 2185 3149 19 10 44 28
1 2 3671048 3008808 35984 721256 9436 0 9436 0 3256 3507 18 10 42 30
1 2 3670884 2994548 35984 721280 7120 0 7120 0 2734 2926 18 10 48 24
free output:
% free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 7881 5881 1999 0 262 965
-/+ buffers/cache: 4653 3228
Swap: 7627 3023 4604