Kswapd0 using 100% of CPU

Question

I've got a mini server running (L)ubuntu 14.04.3, kernel 3.4.39. Every once in a while, the process kswapd0 will use 100% of my CPU power, even though I only use about ~20% of my RAM at that time. There is no reason for kswapd0 to be running, let alone use that much of my CPU. I've already tried putting my vm.swappiness = 1, but unfortunately that didn't help.

There is a lot stuff on google about this problem, some dating back as far as 2010, but no real answer. What should I try?

Thanks in advance!

@Wilf, I have 1GB of RAM, and as far as I know no swap memory. Here is a picture of the output of the top commmand. In the top you can see how much RAM and swap I have. Picture — Foxtrot, Dec 07 '15 at 16:02

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 15 '16 at 18:03

1

Alright I found the answer, it turns out that most of my RAM was full of cached memory. If you set up a cronjob to clear cached memory every hour or so kswapd0 never appears again.

answered Jun 15 '16 at 18:03

Foxtrot

11

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 10 '21 at 16:51

0

It still has a process to check if there's any swap. To reduce it, you'll need to set your swappiness -

edit /etc/sysctl.conf as root, then change (or add)

vm.swappiness = 0

edited Aug 10 '21 at 16:51

Zanna

70,465

answered Dec 23 '20 at 12:00

muhamad Mansour

1

Kswapd0 using 100% of CPU

2 Answers2