Good Afternoon guys, i have a VM with OpenSuSe, 640mb of ram.

I need help making a program that "writes random numbers in a file four times the size of my ram, using buffered io, and direct io. ( C )

how can i do this? i don't know very much of this.. please help me!..

1. I think you're going to find 640MB of RAM very challenging; I'd be surprised if it runs in that, although an OpenSuse expert may be along to correct me
2. this is obviously homework; as per LQ rules, make an attempt and show what you've got. We will help, but not do it for you
3. I recommend you use the 'Report' button to get this moved to the Programming forum, which I feel would be better for this qn

I think I'd give an absolutely solid 'it depends' on that one. Depending on version, and which GUI you install (actually, nothing that you have said implies that you actually need a GUI at all, and if you don't install a GUI I''d have to go for 'something very easy, exactly one piece thereof', if you you go for KDE and don't turn off any of the more extravagant features, it could be quite difficult, with things like XFCE and Enlightenment being quite easy...and then you have to use it.)

If you get any weird error messages during the install that could be down to lack of RAM, and that may or may not have further implications.

Yes, but, we are allowed to push people. How are you getting your random numbers (there is always a question of whether they are good enough, but that hasn't (yet?) been an issue here)?

To be perfectly honest, I don't know how you can do this, either. But I can say that there are usually clues in the course materials that you have so far, and, if you have been keeping up with your course, you'll usually find that the course materials immediately prior to this assignment contain some critical elements.

Also note a part of the point of this exercise seems to be 'use more ram than you've got' (and that's more ram than you had before you started using some of it for other things, like the OS itself and the utilities and compiler, so way more than you have, after using some of it for other things). Have there been any clues how how you might do that?

Exactly; that's why I asked him to show his code so far.

and 640 IS LOW
i installed opensuse 11.2 a bit ago on a machine with 1 gig of ram

it was " usable" ALMOST
and by that i mean 15 sec. for the HOME folder to open from the desktop and 30 to 45 sec for firefox 2 or 3 to open

suse lasted 1 day on that computer ( installed cent 5.3 instead )

now the current opensuse 12.1 runs great wit 8 gig's of ram


also
Shadowolf91 this IS homework so ...
The only way we can help is if YOU post the code you have so far
and just WHERE in it you are stuck at

THEN
we can point you in the right direction