Managing swap space

Real memory on your system often fills with system processes or with temporary files (memfs). When this happens, the system must swap (move) idle processes to disk so that memory can be used for active processes. Swap space is typically located within one or more slices in your UNIX partition(s). The amount of swap space required for your system varies depending on how you use your system. If you use your system to run many processes, especially graphical processes, you might need more swap space. Also, if you add more RAM to your system after the initial system installation, you might want to increase the amount of available swap space.