Re: Dynamic Virtual Memory?
>
>
>
> On Fri, 27 Mar 1998, Tim Thomson wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> > Is there such thing as "dynamic virtual memory"?
> > I have a low spec machine - 8meg RAM 100meg HDD, and have a 10meg swap
> > partition. Obviously I run out of memory every now and then. Is there a
> > way to set the system up so that when virtual memory is exhasted, the
> > kernel will allocate more hard drive space, and deallocates it after
> > awhile?
> I know for certain that you can set up a file as your swap space. I have
> that written down somewhere if you really need that.
How to do it is in the mkswap man page.
> You could, in theory,
> use a script of some sort to interrogate the file (cf: the "mem" command)
> and adjust the size of the file accordingly.... In practice, I haven't
> tried it and it requires 3 or so calls to sync (not sure why) which might
> (??) tamper with the contents of the file. Then the OS _might_ get
> confused.
As far as I know there is one sync required when the swap file is
created, to ensure that the file is completely written to disk. I don't
think using the `swapon' command should confuse the OS. If it does,
that is a severe bug.
> If I remember clearly, the documentation on lilo has something
> about the system crashing at some later time if you tell it (through lilo)
> that you have more memory than you actually have. I dunno if something
> akin to this would occur if you tamper with the swap file.
If you follow the recipe in the mkswap man page, it will work fine. The
lilo docs remark really is about RAM memory.
Eric Meijer
--
E.L. Meijer (tgakem@chem.tue.nl) | tel. office +31 40 2472189
Eindhoven Univ. of Technology | tel. lab. +31 40 2475032
Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (TAK) | tel. fax +31 40 2455054
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