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Cc: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@msu.edu>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: SOLVED: Simple swap question
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>> ////jerry
>>
>> 
> Because this server is monitored by Nagios and it emails me every hour a 
> warning because the swap is not 100% free (I know it's pretty extreme, but I 
> want to know if the system is swapping).
>
> I just tried
>
> swapoff -a ; swapon -a
>
> and it worked great.
>
under completely normal operation when programs fit in real memory 
swapping CAN occur because of file caching.

while programs have priority over file cache in memory, long-unused parts 
of system can be swapped out.

i don't know what's nagios, but configure it to warn you not because there 
are swap used, but if there is more than a little swapping activity.