Why would some process swap in place of reclaiming free(cached) memory

[Mandeep Sandhu]

> I know the pages are kept on disk initially and then swapped in as needed/referenced.  Thus if there are code pages where none of the code in the page has been executed since starting the app, then that page will remain on disk until the application logic eventually invokes it.  At that point it will be demand loaded from disk.
>
> During that early stage, do the never used pages show as swapped out?  If so, why would anyone want all those never used pages to be brought into ram just to sit there unused?

Are you saying that pages of code segment (of an executable) which
have not been accessed yet, are copied onto the swap space from their
location on the disk when the program is exec'ed? Or do they remain on
disk (in their original location) and loaded into memory only when
accessed (and _then_ possibly swapped out)? If they remain on disk,
then that wouldn't show up in swap space, right?

-mandeep

>
> The end result is that that swap'ed pages represent pages available to be swapped in, but not the number of pages that were actually swapped out at some point in time.
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
>
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