procsysvmswappiness

Procsysvmswappiness is an informal, nonstandard term used in some technical discussions to refer to the Linux kernel memory management setting known as swappiness, which is exposed at /proc/sys/vm/swappiness. The term is a portmanteau of “proc,” “sys,” “vm,” and “swappiness,” and it does not appear in official kernel documentation, but it is sometimes used to describe the same concept in aggregate form.

Swappiness is a kernel parameter that controls how aggressively the system moves pages from physical memory into swap space. Its value ranges from 0 to 100, with lower values making the system less prone to swap and higher values making it swap more readily. A value of 0 aims to avoid swapping unless necessary, while a value of 100 prioritizes swapping even if free memory exists, though actual behavior can be influenced by other factors such as memory pressure and I/O activity.

View and modify swappiness via the proc filesystem or sysctl. The current setting can be read with cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness and changed with echo 60 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness or via sysctl -w vm.swappiness=60. Default values vary by distribution, but many modern systems ship with a default around 60. In practice, higher swappiness can improve system responsiveness under memory pressure on systems with fast swap devices or solid-state storage, while lower swappiness can improve interactive performance by keeping active data in RAM longer.

Notes: procsysvmswappiness is not an official kernel term; it is used informally to refer to swappiness. Tuning should be guided by workload, memory capacity, and storage characteristics. See also Linux kernel memory management, /proc/sys/vm/swappiness, and swappiness.