Finding Which Processes Are Swapping in Linux

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Sometimes you will end up with a linux host that is swapping, and many times it will be obvious which process has been chewing up swap (hint: it is always java). But in those cases where it is not as apparent, I whipped up a little bash script to walk the process tree and list each process that is consuming swap space.

#!/bin/bash

SUM=0
OVERALL=0

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

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