Ubuntu 14.04 LTS – high CPU from kswapd due memory pressure

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents

1. Symptom & Impact
2. Environment & Reproduction
3. Root Cause Analysis
4. Quick Triage
5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
6. Solution – Primary Fix
7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
9. Rollback Plan
10. Prevention & Hardening
11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

System responsiveness degrades as kswapd consumes CPU handling memory reclamation.

Environment & Reproduction

Happens under sustained memory pressure, oversized caches, or swap misconfiguration.

Root Cause Analysis

Available memory falls below thresholds, triggering frequent reclaim and swap activity.

Quick Triage

Measure memory, swap, and top process usage to identify pressure sources.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Correlate vmstat, free, and process metrics during peak load windows.

Solution – Primary Fix

Reduce memory footprint, tune swappiness, and add RAM or swap as needed.

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Constrain heavy workloads with cgroups and schedule resource-intensive jobs off-peak.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

kswapd CPU drops to normal baseline and service latency stabilizes.

Rollback Plan

Revert kernel VM tuning values if side effects appear in production.

Prevention & Hardening

Implement memory utilization alerts and right-size workloads to host capacity.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Related events include OOM kills, swap storms, and major page fault spikes.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

View all Ubuntu 14.04 LTS tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

Review Linux VM tuning guidance and Ubuntu performance diagnostics.