I need to look more into it, but before I start the long and arduous "googling my life away" process, I figured someone might know the answer. I've read the man pages several times and they didn't change! :-(
As normal, while looking at one thing, something else bites my butt. I tuned on the swap field in top and sort on it. Here's an edited snippet of the results.
Mem: 775708k total, 764752k used, 10956k free, 60780k buffers Swap: 1572856k total, 160k used, 1572696k free, 377324k cached
PID VIRT RES SHR %MEM SWAP COMMAND 24729 127m 32m 15m 4.3 94m evolution 3409 97220 5268 4304 0.7 89m evolution-data- 2851 115m 36m 7120 4.8 79m X 10937 109m 45m 14m 6.0 63m firefox-bin 3417 63076 7876 6756 1.0 53m evolution-alarm 3363 40332 7284 6228 0.9 32m eggcups 24745 37480 8176 6876 1.1 28m evolution-excha 3736 53272 29m 8660 3.9 22m gnome-terminal 3361 44404 21m 10m 2.9 21m nautilus 3357 39868 21m 10m 2.8 17m gnome-panel 4096 25460 7600 5960 1.0 17m gkrellm 3373 20488 3492 2944 0.5 16m gnome-vfs-daemo 3367 43608 26m 10m 3.4 16m rhn-applet-gui 3359 19904 6128 5316 0.8 13m gnome-volume-ma 3387 20904 8068 6696 1.0 12m clock-applet 3389 19456 6648 5696 0.9 12m notification-ar 3316 19080 7140 5960 0.9 11m gnome-settings- 3385 22304 10m 7576 1.4 11m mixer_applet2 3244 21508 9960 6868 1.3 11m gnome-session 4144 22476 10m 7456 1.4 11m wnck-applet 2587 12412 2364 1940 0.3 9.8m gdm-binary 2846 13220 3340 2728 0.4 9880 gdm-binary 3365 13812 4532 3920 0.6 9280 pam-panel-icon 3355 14768 7524 5984 1.0 7244 metacity 7182 10328 3436 2280 0.4 6892 sendmail 18501 11080 4248 1912 0.5 6832 cupsd
Note that the summary line says 160k of swap is used. The man pages say the summary and the details under "SWAP" are both reported in "k". No mention of "m" is made, I presume that it means "megabytes"?
If so, I can't reconcile what I'm seeing. Free seems to support the summary lines.
total used free... Mem: 775708 764772 10936... -/+ buffers/cache: 326584 449124 Swap: 1572856 160 1572696
Cat of /proc/meminfo also seems to support the summary lines.
SwapTotal: 1572856 kB SwapFree: 1572696 kB
Now, if I treat all those numbers ending in "m" as megabytes, it doesn't take long to see that I've been lied to somewhere along the way. Or alternatively, I'm dense and "Just Don't Get It" (TM).
Any help?