Re: Clearing SWAP
On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 10:29:59PM +0100, andy wrote:
> Ron Johnson wrote:
> >On 05/01/08 15:43, andy wrote:
> >
> >>Of 2863MB of SWAP, some 1881MB are being used. This is a capture of top:
> >[snip]
>>
> >>How can I clear out SWAP so that it does not retain redundant memory
> >>allocated pages?
> >>
> >> I am thinking if SWAP can be cleared, my machine will
> >>be more responsive with current pages written to SWAP, rather than
> >>taking up space written by now obsolete processes.
> >>
> >
> >I'm not sure that this will do what you want...
> >
> Perhaps not. However, my uptime is only 7 days with one user. Yet it
> takes several seconds for my Xfce4 (light and fast) to respond. I am
> unable to load a larger amount of RAM, and my system is sluggish even
> with 1GB of RAM. What is a poor Deb Lenny user to do? SWAP seemed like a
> logical culprit.
> The virtual memory is some 798MB of 980MB and I have only KSCD, KMail,
> Konsole. OO.o Writer, IceApe, IceDove, and this IceDove composer windows
> open.
Xfce4 is no longer light or fast since it uses GTK2. I liked Xfce4 (I'm
in Etch) but it has a serious memory leak; it was a problem for me who
normally uses the command line and startx for X stuff. I also use
Konqueror instead of Iceweasel for most browsing. For desktop, I use
icewm although I would like to try Openbox when I have the time.
Swap having been used perse doesn't slow down the system; having it
being used (I/O wait) does. Don't worry about clearing swap, its a
red-herring.
> When I double click within Xfce on the /home directory icon, there is a
> noticeable lag between clicking and a response. What causes this? Must I
> reboot every few days so as to release memory to allow my system to be
> more responsive? This isn't the GNU/Linux I know and love from my
> Slackware days. What is wrong with my configuration?
>
Get away from Xfce4 until the memory leak is fixed.
Doug.
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