Swap Space

The Solaris system software uses some disk slices for temporary storage rather than for file systems. These slices are called swap slices. Swap slices are used as virtual memory storage areas when the system does not have enough physical memory to handle current processes.

The Solaris 2.x virtual memory system maps physical copies of files on disk to virtual addresses in memory. Physical memory pages which hold the data for these mappings can be backed by regular files in the file system or by swap space. If the memory is backed by swap space it is referred to as anonymous memory because the user doesn't know the names of the files backing the memory.

For a complete conceptual overview of swap space, instructions for adding more swap space, and information on the differences between Solaris 1.x (SunOS 4.x) and Solaris 2.x (SunOS 5.x) swap requirements, see Chapter 30, Configuring Additional Swap Space (Tasks).