Swap file on HDD

[mgillespie]

Hi, I am getting regular occurances of the following in my DMESG:

Code:

page allocation failure. order:3, mode:0x4020

Looking into this some more, it seems it occurs when my memory is exhausted.  I suspect this is because I am not running a swap file/partition.

I have created a 500MB swapfile on my USB HDD, and it seems to have stopped the errors, but having the page file on my HDD means it never spins down !

Is there another solution?   I have been thinking of creating the swap file on SD card. Is this a safe thing to do?  Will it prematurely damage the card?

[Rabeeh Khoury]

What are you running?
The plug has 512MB of DDR.

[mgillespie]

What are you running?
The plug has 512MB of DDR.

Lighttpd (PHP5)
TwonkyMediaserver
SSHD
Screen (wtorrent/rTorrent session)

I agree it's not alot, but I was under the impression that Linux would use up any available memory, as unused memory is wasted memory.  However if a page page request comes in, it can't do anything with it..
 

[dattaway]

Your torrent session is likely using an amazing amount of memory paging.  Use the "top" command and sort by memory useage with the "M" key to see the offenders.  Top also has a handy "kill" feature if you want to prune the process tree.  The "?" command will show other tricks it can do.