I would like to know if having swap space, uses RAM/Memory to keep the swap space 'active', even though the swap space is virtual RAM.
1 Answer
Quoting from Ubuntu website
Swap space is the area on a hard disk which is part of the Virtual Memory of your machine, which is a combination of accessible physical memory (RAM) and the swap space. Swap space temporarily holds memory pages that are inactive. Swap space is used when your system decides that it needs physical memory for active processes and there is insufficient unused physical memory available. If the system happens to need more memory resources or space, inactive pages in physical memory are then moved to the swap space therefore freeing up that physical memory for other uses.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq
So in short swap is place in harddisk used to store RAM data.