modifying memory usage of a program (F-Prot)?

John-Paul Stewart <jpstewart RemoveThis @binaryfoundry.ca> writes:


>> I upgraded the software yesterday, still crashed last night. The "top"
>> output shows it ran out of buffers and swap...which was indeed the same
>> size is before.
>> So I deleted and followed your instructions again...properly, and
>> voila! The "top" now shows swap being 1GB larger, and "swapon -s" shows
>> that new file as part of the swap.
>> What a cool trick that is. =)
>> So I anticipate everything working OK tonight.
>> Thanks for the help!!

>It'll be interesting to see if the problem re-occurs, but later due to
>the larger available swap space (indicating a memory leak in the app) or
>if it goes away (indicating your system was just starved for memory in
>which case you may want to add more RAM as well as the swap space.)

Yee gads. Get 1GB ofmemory and add that. swap is a hopeless way of creating
memory. It is about a factor of 1000 slower than memory. If you program
starts swappping you might as well forget about it. If you run out of swap,
you should definitley forget about it. Your machine will spend all of its
time swapping and none doing anything useful.
GET MORE MEMORY. Do not increase swap.it is useless for accomplishing
anything.

Unruh wrote:
> John-Paul Stewart <jpstewart.RemoveThis@binaryfoundry.ca> writes:
>
>
>
>>>I upgraded the software yesterday, still crashed last night. The "top"
>>>output shows it ran out of buffers and swap...which was indeed the same
>>>size is before.
>>>So I deleted and followed your instructions again...properly, and
>>>voila! The "top" now shows swap being 1GB larger, and "swapon -s" shows
>>>that new file as part of the swap.
>>>What a cool trick that is. =)
>>>So I anticipate everything working OK tonight.
>>>Thanks for the help!!
>
>
>>It'll be interesting to see if the problem re-occurs, but later due to
>>the larger available swap space (indicating a memory leak in the app) or
>>if it goes away (indicating your system was just starved for memory in
>>which case you may want to add more RAM as well as the swap space.)
>
>
> Yee gads. Get 1GB ofmemory and add that. swap is a hopeless way of creating
> memory. It is about a factor of 1000 slower than memory. If you program
> starts swappping you might as well forget about it. If you run out of swap,
> you should definitley forget about it. Your machine will spend all of its
> time swapping and none doing anything useful.
> GET MORE MEMORY. Do not increase swap.it is useless for accomplishing
> anything.

If you look up thread, I was suggesting the OP add the swap as a
diagnostic tool. If he increases swap by 1GB and the original problem
(F-Prot using all RAM and swap) persists, that's a likely indication of
a memory leak or other problem with the application. In that case, no
amount of additional RAM will help. So why spend the money on extra RAM
until you know for sure that it will help?

However, if the problem does go away with the additonal swap, then I
fully agree that extra RAM is a better long-term solution.