This is an old desktop I use for some small self hosting services. I never use all my RAM and I don't see any RAM spikes other than when I install/compile things which I haven't done in months. I restarted the machine a couple of times, but the SWAP will eventually go right back up to 100%.
I have an Ubuntu server/yunohost setup and found: https://askubuntu.com/questions/157793/why-is-swap-being-used-even-though-i-have-plenty-of-free-ram
My cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness value is indeed 60. Im not sure what would reduce the SWAP space usage.
Would changing this swappiness value help? Anyone come across this issue before?
EDIT: Found out what it is, its the matrix server that is running on the system. Its taking up a significant amount of swap. Found out via:
smem -s swap -r -p
turning that off, the system is now using 90% less SWAP.
/opt/yunohost/matrix-synaps was the process.
Might not be, it's just strange.
My other Linux machines use much less but have more space designated to SWAP. And using Linux for as long as I have, swap space is usually reserved when there is a huge increase in ram usage.
No, not a huge increase. It's whatever is deemed to be most efficient at the time. You should get more familiar with how RAM is committed and used if you're suspecting something. Perhaps in this case it's all just committed cache memory and not contiguous tracts being reserved.
Get the output of
free -m