swapoff/swapon issues

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: swapoff/swapon issues
started by: vees

Posted by vees on June 08 2006,21:52

Hi,

I tried using the 'swapoff -a' command to prevent my HD to be accessed on my laptop (I had stopped my HD with the 'hdparm -S' command already). My aim is to use the least amout of power and to maximise battery life.

All worked perfectly (I had used to live-CD of DSL with the 'toram' cheat code) until I tried browsing the net with Firefox which ended up crashing until I turned the swap back on with the 'swapon' command.

The weird thing is that my 192 RAM memory was used at only 37 percent when this happened. Could it be that Firefox is coded to *require* swapping regardless of how much RAM is actually used?!

Generally - am I facing potential problems if I keep my swap off?

Many thanks for any help!

VS

Posted by kerry on June 08 2006,22:10

Your system will only use 60% of ram the rest is reserverd. I'm not sure exactly how that works but if you want to know more google is your friend. Try dillo it dosen't have that overhead FF has. If your getting your 37% # from torsmo, it does not show whats buffered and the programs that have been opened and closed but still remain in ram. i have 256 of ram on my laptop and still need a swap. I run in ram using a usb key formatted to swap, i have no hd.

Posted by Zucca on June 09 2006,02:52

I have same problems. Especially when starting a java applet within FireFox.

My trick is to log out and log back in and then I do swapoff -a. This may not be possible when you have used too much of your ram to store temp and other files. This might help:

Code Sample

sudo rm -fr /tmp/*

But when I want to use large programs I turn swap back on.
Anyway DSL uses swap rarely, so I usually leave swap settings alone.

Posted by cbagger01 on June 11 2006,04:11

Why not just boot with:

dsl noswap

at the boot prompt?

If you let the swap get turned on at boot time and then turn it of later on, you risk running out of free application RAM.

The best choice is to use a boot time cheatcode "noswap" to avoid the use of the swap in the first place.

Posted by meo on June 11 2006,15:24

Hi guys!

I have tried to stop my hd (it's old and noisy) with 'hdparm -S' but something has to be added to this command. I'd appreciate any help in this regard. Thanks for the tip to boot with noswap!

Have fun out there,
meo