[darkelf_18]

Hey guys, I was importing about 1.8 gigs of photos from my CF card and it seems that all the memory went right to my disk cache. And just stays there till I reboot my computer. And since the disk cache uses RAM it used up like all but 50mbs of my 2gigs of RAM. So I am wondering how to turn disk cache off, or how to clear it with a command. I have been googling this matter for awhile with no success. Anyone here have an idea?

Thanks,
DE

[lotuseclat79]

Did you try a sync command (as root) a couple of times to flush file system buffers?

-- Tom

[darkelf_18]

no I didnt... I didnt know about that command at all. I will try it next time. My disk cache fills up no matter what I do, be it importing photos or running a virtualbox. BTW I just tried the sudo sync and the disk cache stayed the same... Any ideas on how to clear that? I went on the ubuntu forums and havnt really gotten a reply on that... My system takes a major crap anytime the disk cache takes up my RAM...

[lotuseclat79]

The sync command should be given at least twice. It will flush the file system buffers.

That said, since the mechanism you are using, the CF card, which I assume is a hardware card which when you insert it into a USB port activates its own softwareon your OS. After you have verified that the photos are stored on your hard disk, do you exit the software and or unplug the CF card or leave it in?

If you unplug and exit the software that transfers the data from your card to your hard disk, the system memory should be reclaimed. If not, one thing you can do is
1) before you insert your CF card and use the software, issue the command: ps -lx
2) insert the card,
3) reissue ps -lx command and
4) find the pid associated with running the use of the CF card and software associated with it.

Then substitute the pid of the process in the kill command as follows:

Try killing the processes associated with running the CF card and its software:
$ kill -9 <pid> (without the <>)

If that does not immediate work, try: sudo kill -9 <pid> (without the <>)

Killing the processes should reclaim the memory.

-- Tom

[darkelf_18]

Thanks for the help. I tried the help lotusclat. Like I said, I tried the sudo sync. And I think that it cleared the buffer. But did nothing to the cache... And I tried killing processes that were taking up system memory. And it reduced the "application data" being used. But again the disk cache stays the same...

[freebe]

I used openoffice to edit a file on a floppy while offline. Closed openoffice & removed the floppy. The file was still in memory when I clked on it it came up in openoffice. Tried logging out but was still there. Finally shut dwn & restarted to clear it from memory before getting online. I will try SUDO SYNC & see if it clears it from memory.

[freebe]

I just tried saving a new txt file to floppy then doing a sudo sync & the file was still there like last time..

ahh - UNmount the floppy! Then the file was gone. ..so I guess that would have worked other day as well.