any downside to extending to swap file?
 

UPDATE: I happened to run across GeneralAntilles in an IRC room and he graciously answered my question for me:

"No, it really only helps. Speeds things up just a touch in high-memory situations and helps prevent out-of-memory crashes in really high-memory situations."

So there you go!

---------------------------

I've spent the last hour or so reading all the forums posts that come up when searching for "swap" so hopefully I'm not being redundant. If it's been discussed, please point me in the right direction (and forgive me).

I'm running OS 2008 on my n800. I just got my new 8gb SDHC card in the mail. Since that's got about all the space I could conceivably want for files and whatnot, I decided I might as well put the Nokia 128 meg mini-SD card in the internal slot and enable it for swap via the control panel. Not that I've noticed the device being slow or that I particularly need it, but I figured, "Why not, I'm not doing anything else with the slot."

Is my reasoning correct? Are there any downsides to extending swap onto the internal card? Decrease battery life? Increase tension in the middle east? Raise my receding hair line?

Thanks,

-SG

Re: any downside to extending to swap file?
 

Should work fine. I've got it running on one of my 4GB cards on the internal slot.

I will say, though, that you should probably put it on your fastest card, i.e., probably the 8GB SDHC. This is a read/write intensive process, so faster cards should speed things up over a slower card.

Re: any downside to extending to swap file?
 

"Heavy usage of the extended virtual memory may affect the durability of the memory card."

- Nokia OS2008 user Manual

Re: any downside to extending to swap file?
 

:::

Doesn't matter, the SD is Changable & quite cheap now!

:::

Re: any downside to extending to swap file?
 

Yes, I noticed this comment in the manual too. Then I wondered what the impact on N810 users might be who cannot replace their internal card. Any warranty implications?

For myself, I have found on my N810 that switching on 128Mb of swap had the effect of slowing down the machine significantly esp. when browsing. I've ended up switching it off again and just accepting any limitations on the number of apps running at the same time. So far no real problems.

Re: any downside to extending to swap file?
 

There is one downside (to some, at least): With swap enabled / activated on the card you won't be able to see the card over USB from your PC (unless you turn off swap for such occasions). The NIT needs to unmount the card before making it visible over USB, and it can't do that if it's got an active swap file on it.

Re: any downside to extending to swap file?
 

I haven't had problems accessing internal memory card with swap enabled... but I tend to close all my apps before connecting it with USB cable.

My guess is that the swap can be left enabled, but IT should not have active pages to swap (virtual?) memory when trying to connect to PC as removable disk.

Re: any downside to extending to swap file?
 

I am able to see both my internal and external on my PC with the swap enabled. I think it depends on whether the tablet is actually swapping to the card or not at the time you plug into a PC. You can check this by going to the terminal app and typing "free", and see if the swap is in use or not. The number to the right of the word swap should be 0, if there is any other number the swap is in use.

Re: any downside to extending to swap file?
 

FWIW On my N810 - my Swap is automatically cleared whenever I attach to the USB cable. My setup is a bit different from the norm - because I'm running KDE, I end up using swap a bit more frequently - I can actually watch on my system monitor as my swap size drops off to zero when USB is attached.

Re: any downside to extending to swap file?
 

This could actually be a feature added in OS2008, specifically with the N810 in mind - as it has only a single card slot it would be quite important. On the N800 w/OS2007 there didn't seem to be such a feature - at least there used to be lots of reports about only the external slot visible. It all turned out to be because those users had VM enbled on the internal card. It makes sense to automatically (when possible) turn off swap when the USB cable is attached.