How to find out which processes are using swap spa

Question

Under Linux, how do I find out which process is using the swap space more?

Answer 1

Here's another variant of the script, but meant to give more readable output (you need to run this as root to get exact results):

#!/bin/bash

    # find-out-what-is-using-your-swap.sh
    # -- Get current swap usage for all running processes
    # --
    # -- rev.0.3, 2012-09-03, Jan Smid          - alignment and intendation, sorting
    # -- rev.0.2, 2012-08-09, Mikko Rantalainen - pipe the output to "sort -nk3" to get sorted output
    # -- rev.0.1, 2011-05-27, Erik Ljungstrom   - initial version


SCRIPT_NAME=`basename $0`;
SORT="kb";                 # {pid|kB|name} as first parameter, [default: kb]
[ "$1" != "" ] && { SORT="$1"; }

[ ! -x `which mktemp` ] && { echo "ERROR: mktemp is not available!"; exit; }
MKTEMP=`which mktemp`;
TMP=`${MKTEMP} -d`;
[ ! -d "${TMP}" ] && { echo "ERROR: unable to create temp dir!"; exit; }

>${TMP}/${SCRIPT_NAME}.pid;
>${TMP}/${SCRIPT_NAME}.kb;
>${TMP}/${SCRIPT_NAME}.name;

SUM=0;
OVERALL=0;
    echo "${OVERALL}" > ${TMP}/${SCRIPT_NAME}.overal;

for DIR in `find /proc/ -maxdepth 1 -type d -regex "^/proc/[0-9]+"`;
do
    PID=`echo $DIR | cut -d / -f 3`
    PROGNAME=`ps -p $PID -o comm --no-headers`

    for SWAP in `grep Swap $DIR/smaps 2>/dev/null| awk '{ print $2 }'`
    do
        let SUM=$SUM+$SWAP
    done

    if (( $SUM > 0 ));
    then
        echo -n ".";
        echo -e "${PID}\t${SUM}\t${PROGNAME}" >> ${TMP}/${SCRIPT_NAME}.pid;
        echo -e "${SUM}\t${PID}\t${PROGNAME}" >> ${TMP}/${SCRIPT_NAME}.kb;
        echo -e "${PROGNAME}\t${SUM}\t${PID}" >> ${TMP}/${SCRIPT_NAME}.name;
    fi
    let OVERALL=$OVERALL+$SUM
    SUM=0
done
echo "${OVERALL}" > ${TMP}/${SCRIPT_NAME}.overal;
echo;
echo "Overall swap used: ${OVERALL} kB";
echo "========================================";
case "${SORT}" in
    name )
        echo -e "name\tkB\tpid";
        echo "========================================";
        cat ${TMP}/${SCRIPT_NAME}.name|sort -r;
        ;;

    kb )
        echo -e "kB\tpid\tname";
        echo "========================================";
        cat ${TMP}/${SCRIPT_NAME}.kb|sort -rh;
        ;;

    pid | * )
        echo -e "pid\tkB\tname";
        echo "========================================";
        cat ${TMP}/${SCRIPT_NAME}.pid|sort -rh;
        ;;
esac
rm -fR "${TMP}/";

Answer 2

Yet two more variants:

A shell variant! (Not bash only)

This is exactly same than lolotux script, but without any fork to grep, awk or ps. This is a lot quicker!

And as bash is one of the poorest shell regarding performance, a little work was done to ensure this script will run well under dash, busybox and some other. Then, (thanks to Stéphane Chazelas,) become a lot quicker again!

#!/bin/sh 
# Get current swap usage for all running processes
# Felix Hauri 2016-08-05
# Rewritted without fork. Inspired by first stuff from
# Erik Ljungstrom 27/05/2011
# Modified by Mikko Rantalainen 2012-08-09
# Pipe the output to "sort -nk3" to get sorted output
# Modified by Marc Methot 2014-09-18
# removed the need for sudo

OVERALL=0
rifs=`printf ': \t'`
for FILE in /proc/[0-9]*/status ;do
    SUM=0
    while IFS="$rifs" read FIELD VALUE ;do
        case $FIELD in
            Pid )    PID=$VALUE      ;;
            Name )   PROGNAME="$VALUE" ;;
            VmSwap ) SUM=$((SUM=${VALUE% *}))  ;;
        esac
    done <$FILE
    [ $SUM -gt 0 ] &&
        printf "PID: %9d  swapped: %11d KB (%s)\n" $PID $SUM "$PROGNAME"
    OVERALL=$((OVERALL+SUM))
done
printf "Total swapped memory: %14u KB\n" $OVERALL

Don't forgot to double quote "$PROGNAME" ! See Stéphane Chazelas's comment:

read FIELD PROGNAME < <(
    perl -ne 'BEGIN{$0="/*/*/../../*/*"} print if /^Name/' /proc/self/status
)
echo $FIELD "$PROGNAME"

Don't try echo $PROGNAME without double quote on sensible system, and be ready to kill current shell before!

And a perl version

As this become a not so simple script, time is comming to write a dedicated tool by using more efficient language.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Getopt::Std;
my ($tot,$mtot)=(0,0);
my %procs;

my %opts;
getopt('', \%opts);

sub sortres {
    return $a <=> $b                                          if $opts{'p'};
    return $procs{$a}->{'cmd'} cmp $procs{$b}->{'cmd'}        if $opts{'c'};
    return $procs{$a}->{'mswap'} <=> $procs{$b}->{'mswap'}    if $opts{'m'};
    return $procs{$a}->{'swap'} <=> $procs{$b}->{'swap'};
};

opendir my $dh,"/proc";

for my $pid (grep {/^\d+$/} readdir $dh) {
    if (open my $fh,"</proc/$pid/status") {
        my ($sum,$nam)=(0,"");
        while (<$fh>) {
            $sum+=$1 if /^VmSwap:\s+(\d+)\s/;
            $nam=$1 if /^Name:\s+(\S+)/;
        }
        if ($sum) {
            $tot+=$sum;
            $procs{$pid}->{'swap'}=$sum;
            $procs{$pid}->{'cmd'}=$nam;
            close $fh;
            if (open my $fh,"</proc/$pid/smaps") {
                $sum=0;
                while (<$fh>) {
                    $sum+=$1 if /^Swap:\s+(\d+)\s/;
                };
            };
            $mtot+=$sum;
            $procs{$pid}->{'mswap'}=$sum;
        } else { close $fh; };
    };
};
map {
    printf "PID: %9d  swapped: %11d (%11d) KB (%s)\n",
        $_, $procs{$_}->{'swap'}, $procs{$_}->{'mswap'}, $procs{$_}->{'cmd'};
} sort sortres keys %procs;
printf "Total swapped memory: %14u (%11u) KB\n", $tot,$mtot;

could by run with one of

-c  sort by command name
-p  sort by pid
-m  sort by swap values
by default, output is sorted by status's vmsize

Answer 3

The top command also contains a field to display the number of page faults for a process. The process with maximum page faults would be the process which is swapping most. For long running daemons it might be that they incur large number of page faults at the beginning and the number does not increase later on. So we need to observe whether the page faults is increasing.

Answer 4

The best script I found is on this page : http://northernmost.org/blog/find-out-what-is-using-your-swap/

Here's one variant of the script and no root needed:

#!/bin/bash 
# Get current swap usage for all running processes
# Erik Ljungstrom 27/05/2011
# Modified by Mikko Rantalainen 2012-08-09
# Pipe the output to "sort -nk3" to get sorted output
# Modified by Marc Methot 2014-09-18
# removed the need for sudo

SUM=0
OVERALL=0
for DIR in `find /proc/ -maxdepth 1 -type d -regex "^/proc/[0-9]+"`
do
    PID=`echo $DIR | cut -d / -f 3`
    PROGNAME=`ps -p $PID -o comm --no-headers`
    for SWAP in `grep VmSwap $DIR/status 2>/dev/null | awk '{ print $2 }'`
    do
        let SUM=$SUM+$SWAP
    done
    if (( $SUM > 0 )); then
        echo "PID=$PID swapped $SUM KB ($PROGNAME)"
    fi
    let OVERALL=$OVERALL+$SUM
    SUM=0
done
echo "Overall swap used: $OVERALL KB"

Answer 5

iotop is a very useful tool. It gives live stats of I/O and swap usage per process/thread. By default it shows per thread but you can do iotop -P to get per process info. This is not available by default. You may have to install via rpm/apt.

Answer 6

I suppose you could get a good guess by running top and looking for active processes using a lot of memory. Doing this programatically is harder---just look at the endless debates about the Linux OOM killer heuristics.

Swapping is a function of having more memory in active use than is installed, so it is usually hard to blame it on a single process. If it is an ongoing problem, the best solution is to install more memory, or make other systemic changes.