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-   -   increase free physical memory, decrease disk cache (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-hardware-18/increase-free-physical-memory-decrease-disk-cache-429297/)

efm 03-28-2006 10:30 AM

increase free physical memory, decrease disk cache
 
Hello,
I have a 384 Mb of memory size in my computer,
and here is the configuration according to my suse linux
memory monitor:

Total physical memory : 384,862,592 bytes
Free physical memory : 5,054,464 bytes
Shared memory : 0 bytes
Disk buffers : 43,470,904 bytes
Disk cache : 227,020,800 bytes

Total swap memory : 1,077,501,952 bytes
Free swap memory : 1,077,501,952 bytes

my question:

1. is there any way I could increase the free physical
memory and reduce disk cache or disk buffers?

2. I always ran out of my virtual system memory in Windows,
but never in linux, and it seems that my linux box never uses
swap memory at all. So, is thare any way I could make linux
uses the swap memory?

thanks

ilikejam 03-28-2006 10:52 AM

Hi.

There is a way of getting Linux to swap more agressively:
(as root)
Code:

echo 100 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
You can give any number from 0 - 100. 100 being the most swappy. The default is 60.
Is it a good idea? Depends who you ask. I can't say I noticed much difference overall playing about with the swappiness value.

Have a look here:
http://kerneltrap.org/node/3000

Dave

efm 03-28-2006 05:55 PM

hi ilikejam, thanks for the reply,
if i relies on swap memory, will it slow down my computer?
and how about decreasing the cache memory to increase my free memory?
thank you

syg00 03-28-2006 07:38 PM

The disk cache will decrease automatically as other tasks require storage. Your memory will generally always appear full. This is not a problem, but a design goal.
Having lots of disk cache, and no swap used is *good* - it means you have more than enough memory for what you are running.

ilikejam 03-30-2006 09:53 AM

A wise man once said to me:
"Unused RAM is wasted RAM"

Dave


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