swap usage for Solaris (memory)

[Dominique Frise]

Hi,

The latest -stable- version 3.6 of top has changed the way of reporting the 
swap usage. It now reports the same output as "swap -l" does, which includes 
swap area on disk only.

In previous versions, top, used the output of "swap -s", which includes swap 
space from  all configured  swap  areas  as listed by the -l
option, as well swap space in  the  form of physical memory.

William Lefevre, developer of top, about this problem:

<quote>
This behavior is intentional.  The output was changed in 3.6.  As stated
in the man page: "free swap" is the amount of swap area on disk that is
still available.  The swap figures will differ from the summary output of
swap(1M) since the latter includes physical memory as well.

This change was made for a variety of reasons.  One, this brings solaris
top in line with the type of output given on other systems top supports.
Two, the information is more in line with users expectations (except for
those that got used to previous versions of top).  Three, swap -s collects
its information by using an undocumented system interface, and by changing
the output of top it no longer relies on this undocumented interface.  I
will add some words to the documentation to make it clear that the output
has changed from previous versions.
</quote>

For details see 
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=536042&aid=1698978&group_id=72892


Until now and under Solaris, Hobbit "memory" column uses "swap -s" to display 
the swap usage.
Don't you think it should use the "swap -l" instead?


Dominique
UNIL - University of Lausanne