On 06/12/2023 01:42, jeremy ardley wrote:
I have discovered a magic bullet for solving running out of memory sudo sync; sudo sh -c 'echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches'Sadly it looks like I'll need to do this daily, simply for using Debian Bookworm with a variety of web browsers
Magic does not work. From my point of view, the scope of such command is benchmarking of cold start in some applications. It ensures that all files are read from disk, not taken from RAM caches.
The command certainly may change numbers presented by free(1) or top(1). Actually if it can increase amount of free memory then applications should not starve from insufficient RAM. Kernel should drop some caches in response to memory allocation request.
Probable negative consequence is that some files will be read again.You mentioned that you have no swap on this machine (I remember, actually swap exists). Does it mean that you followed some guide trying to optimize system performance e.g. to minimize SSD wearing?
I suspect that changing some kernel tunables may degrade cache performance. I would try to start from clean state. Unfortunately my experience with such optimizing is negligible.