Virtual Memory Outcomes?
 

Pdf-reader throws "not enough memory" message much too often. Think I'll go for virtual memory extension.

If I extend virtual memory on my 770, can I swap rs-mmc when device is:
- powered ON?
- powered OFF?

Any disadvantages of this feature?
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It will give you a warning when swap is in use and you try to remove the card and tell you that all programs have to be closed first.

:confused:
Does that mean the swap will work successfully, e.g. to browse (and open) the files on 2nd card?
..assuming I've closed all the programs before swap.
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I don't quite understand your question, but I have 2 1 GB cards and have installed Nokia's swap file (all 64 MB of it) on both cards.

All I have to do is close all applications, wait a few seconds (just to be sure) and switch cards. The 770 informs me that a memory card has been inserted and automagically mounts the swap on the new card (checking Control Panel confirms this).

Nokia has screwed a lot of things up with the 770 software, but this one they did flawlessly and brilliantly.

I think this is the magic he needs to hear. Make sure the swap is installed on both. This makes me wonder though if it would built it atutomatically with hot swap, reboot or both.

Thanks Karel, that did answer a part of my question.

Now, will this work for cards having different swap-file configuration? How does 770 behave in such a scenario?

My apprehensions come from 2 64MB cards I have - will I still be able use them?
I plan to install the swap-file (of 64MB) on my 1GB card.
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Uhhh... does the swap *have* to be 64MB? I'm still using the bundled card and have allocated just 8MB.

FWIW, I've d/led podcasts to the card, removed it, put it in the adapter and played the casts on my el cheapo SD-based jWin MP3 player. I've had all apps closed on the 770 (figured tha's just common sense) and haven't had any problems.

I've used the 770 without memory card inserted and it Just Works (<TM>), but without swap.

I've never amassed the courage to fork around with my (working) swap configuration, but feel free to experiment. It would seem unlikely that you could screw up things beyond what a simple reboot cannot fix.

Nokia's swap file cannot be larger than 64 MB. I figured that on a one gig card there wouldn't be much difference between 1 and 64 MB.

Of course, once the Open770 distro ships, and 16 GB RS-MMC cards are in shops all over the world, we'll be laughing reminiscing the days when we had to make do with 64 MB... :p

You are missing out by not having a 2GB card (around $50). It feels faster with the 64MB swap but you know how that is when you haven't a benchmark to back it up.

Dunno if I'm alone in this, but I strongly suspect that the Nokia standard 64MB swap file plays a significant role in the symptoms already described by others, ie the battery chewing itself down from full to red overnight while the tablet lays idle with its cover on, and spontaneous reboots in the same conditions. At least such occurrences seem to have decreased drastically in numbers since I disabled the swap.

That said, I was also suspecting the bluetooth plugin. Not having the patience to do a proper scientific test, I disabled both at the same time, so maybe it's one or the other, or a combination of both. Or perhaps just a bad MMC :-)

I have both installed and have yet to see the first of those symptoms.

Are you quite sure ?

Battery drain is quite obvious of course, but auto-reboot when idle can be easy to miss if you don't usually leave an app open all the time (like the browser) and suddenly find it's not there anymore.

If you almost never turn off your tablet nor let it run dry, the 'uptime' command run from xterm should return quite a lengthy value. Is that duration as high as you think it should be ?

fpp, do you exit the shell while in xterm or do you just shut down xterm? I was lazy at first and just shut down xterm then I realized the shells were staying open (one for the default user and then the one created when I sudu su) I wonder if this could be more of the issue rather than the swap.

Sometimes an xterm that's in the background just goes 'poof' while I'm doing something else, and in that case the processes it was running (like privoxy) stay in memory. But most of the time I exit properly, so I never have a gazillion xterms runing. Not enough uptime for that :-)

Lessee: uptime output
00:38:00 up 9 days, 3:28, load average: 0.21, 0.04, 0.01

Yup, sounds about right. I'm trying to remember why I rebooted 9 days ago... Oh yeah: that was when I tried Minimo again and it stank up Nokillo completely.

It seems I'm not really taxing Nokillo to its limits -- which is actually a good thing: plenty of juice left if I want to toughen it up a bit.

Geez, I turn off at least once a day, sometimes more. Sometimes it's to preserve battery, other times (post-crash) to kick the system in its head (The Sopranos Maneuver!).

I've had Opera go Poof! before adding the BT KB plug-in. But I've also had the 770 with OS 2006 do things that seem miraculous when compared to 2005: 6 browser windows open (4 of which were *ebay*!) plus RSS feed reader open too. (That said, Opera has still Poofed with fewer windows...)

I've been thinking of getting a big card...

I went ahead and extended virtual memory (64MB) on my 1GB card and am quite happy with 770's behaviour when I change memory cards.

Now I can remove 1GB card (with swap-file installed) and insert 64MB card (with NO swap-file installed) -- 770 picks it up without any complaint. Virtual-memory settings in control panel are changed to reflect settings on the card inserted.
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See? Told you so.

I noticed yesterday that the same thing happens (close all programs dialog) when you use the usb cable so I wouldn't be concerned.