Clear the computer's memory?

[Ken Rune Helland]

Vincent Trouilliez wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-03-30 at 09:38 +0100, Tony Arnold wrote:
> 
>>Isn't that inevitable? Suspend to disk means just that: move all the
>>processes out to the disk so the machine can be powered off. 
> 
> 
> Yes exactly. It puts the contents of the RAM onto disk, so it can read
> it back when resumed. Problem is that when I resume, there is still data
> on swap, despite there were none when I put it to sleep.
> 
> 
>>Linux then uses its normal paging mechanism to get stuff back into memory as it is
>>needed.
> 
> 
> Ah, I understand... so I guess I just expected too much from the
> hibernate mode, it seems. It doesn't work as I would have expected
> it :o(
> 
> 
> 
>>Does the machine not become more an more responsive without deactivating
>>swap? I'm thinking the processes that get used will be swapped back into
>>memory anyway over time? 
> 
> 
> Nope. Even if I leave it alone for a few seconds after closing VMWare
> (or whatever), it will not think of reloading the other apps from swap
> by itself, that's the problem...
> 

It will not reload from swap simply because memory is free, it will
reload when the applications/prosseses are actively accessing that memory.

This means if you close down a big application and then restarts it
the system wont have to read inactive procceses memory back from swap
and then swap them back out again.


KenR