UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

Hello,
How is it possible to free swap memory on AIX.

when i do vmstat on machine i can see less than 1 Gb "fre" when usually I have around 5 GB.

I dont wont to reboot the server.

any idea?

Thanks.

Never heard of such things.
Anyways why do you want such thing?
All I know are the following increasing , decreasing , activating and deactivating swap space.
The only way that I know is to deactivate swap to free up disk space , that if you don't want to go with reboots.

in linux works "swapoff / dev / sdaX" or "swapoff / dev / vg_xxxx / lv_swap" also can do "sysctl-w vm.swapiness = 10" default 60, this works on Linux for AIX should be "swapoff / device ". This will not affect the operation of the OS but it is best not to, it should be noted that the swap buffers are copied to the ram and you should check you have enough space.

Linux is unusual in having "virtual swap" where swap is not needed for all memory.

I think AIX is like most other UNIX where all active memory must be backed by swap -- not that writes all memory to disk all the time, but when 500MB memory is allocated, 500MB gets reserved for this memory should it need to be swapped out. So I don't think just turning off all swap is tenable here.

Having to allocate which swap to use after-the-fact like Linux does can sometimes result in 'overcomitting' when the system tries to use more swap space than you actually have, runs out of memory, and has to start killing things to make room.