make ubuntu 8.04 use RAM before SWAP
i have an old P4 laptop with 768MB of RAM, i noticed it idling and making a clicking sound as though it was working hard, i fired up the system monitor to find that it was using 28MB worth of swap space while only using a third of the available RAM, is there any way to change the priority to use all the RAM first?
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Ubuntu (and all linux OS that I have tried) will automatically use all RAM before using swap. Open a terminal and post the output of this command: "free -m". Mine looks like this:
Code:
tom@debian:~$ free -m As for the "clicking sound", you probably need to enable laptop mode. From the terminal run: Code:
cat /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode Code:
sudo laptop_mode http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=994598 Edit /etc/default/acpi-support and /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf as described in that thread. |
Here's what I get when I type "free -m":
Code:
total used free shared buffers cached I topped out at about 700 MB and realised that I'd never actually use that much RAM, so I'm happy with my gigabyte and I'm happy not having a swap file. |
Quote:
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to clarify, this system isnt exactly a laptop, all it's internals are desktop standard, it is however in a laptop style case and easily portable, it's what's known as a "desknote" ie. a cross between a desktop and a notebook
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problem solved, the clicking sound was a CPU fan that was about to die, as it is now dead
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swap priority can be set from swapon
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what would the command look like?
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i dont have any swap on my main system as i have 2GB of RAM i consider it unnecessary, but this desknote only has a single core 2.6Ghz processor and 768MB of RAM, it struggles with screen-savers lol
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swapon -p
man swapon |
Irrelevant - that priority only determines the order that multiple swap extents will be used.
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Change the swappiness. Here is a link for changing it, as well as some other things; even though it's written for sidux, it should apply to almost all Debian-based distros.
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