If anything using swap will slow down teh computer even more. I have 1 gig of memory and I don't even configure swap. Linux will use swap space when it needs to as for forcing it I'm not sure. Did you try searching google yet? Are you sure it's rsync that's using all the memory? Maybe update rsync? it shouldn't be so memory hungry. you can run the top command from the cmd line to see what's using all the resources.

Yes, beyond a certain point in on board RAM, a swap will actually slow you down. Unless you are using some huge memory hog app, having no swap with RAM greater than 512 will in most cases increase your performance. In my opinion, with anything over 512 RAM, a swap space becomes unnecessary.
 
 

I think you answered my question here, which I had in another post, Dan. I have been wondering about the swap, as well. I'm using 1GB of PC2700 RAM with an AMD XP3000+ processor. I also use an AGP Nvidia video card with 128M of video RAM. So, I guess you'd say that my system would run fine without the swap and maybe even a bit faster? Probably one of the most memory intense applications I run would be Star Office, just at a guess.
 
Regards,
zenarcher

Star Office is a hog, no doubt about it. Back when I was using Mandrake 9.0, I'd click on it, go do something else and come back!

I'm using StarOffice 7.0 here, Dan. As I say, I'm running 1GB of PC2700 RAM and actually, StarOffice opens fairly quickly. I admit, it is a bit slow, but not more than about 5 - 10 seconds, or thereabouts. I can't complain. I think right now I have 1GB of swap on this system, with Mandriva 2005LE PowerPack. Oh, and the hard drives are 7200 RPM SATA drives.
 
Today or tomorrow, I should receive my SUSE 9.3 Pro disks. I ordered this time on DVD. Anyway, I'm going to give it a try, as from what I've read, using the SUSE LVM setup, I can use both my hard drives effectively and easily...set up through the GUI. Or, I can set up SATA RAID0 through the GUI, as well....while I've never figured out how to do it right with MDADM or Mandriva.
 
I tried SUSE 9.0...first time I played with Linux. It installed fine, but after something between 20 seconds and ten minutes...time varied....my ethernet connection would freeze up...then, everything would freeze up. The only way out was a hard boot from the power switch. I never figured out the problem. That's when I tried Mandrake and all worked perfectly. I'm hoping I don't encounter this issue with SUSE 9.3
 
Regards,
zenarcher

is swap really necessary?

how can i free memory without rebooting the pc...thanks....

If you have enough memory, you can allocate more memory to Open Office (OO) by opening it, selecting "tools" from the dropdown window-->options-->memory. Change the default memory usage for OO to 32. This will make OO open more quickly and be more responsive.
 
Swap is needed/helpful for systems with limited memory. In the newer distros, if you have 256 mb of memory or less, swap space will improve performance. As you get over 512 mb of memory, the benefits decrease, as your ram will handle most tasks easily.
 
Once Linux starts and completes it's startup sequence, it frees up memory automatically. If you find that the system slows once you multitask, the easiest solution is to add more memory or have sufficient swap space to handle the load.

Wow! Thanks for that tip! I went into StarOffice and it was showing 9M for RAM, so I increased to 32M and what a difference! Since I have 1GB of RAM in this system, I seriously doubt it will bother anything!
 
Regards,
zenarcher

Thank you guys...
 

Thanks for the tip daneff! My OO flies now!

It's unreal, the difference in speed, isn't it? I'd have never guessed!
 
zenarcher

My goodness! I finally gave a good tip?
 
One of those "hidden" secrets!!!

Damn that's [censored]y. Great tip. Thanks Danleff