Dear all, I was just experimenting for the first time with os.posix_fadvise(), which is new in Python3.3 . I'm reading from a really huge file (several GB) and I want to use the data only once, so I don't want OS-level page caching. I tried os.posix_fadvise with the os.POSIX_FADV_NOREUSE and with the os.POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED flags, but neither seemed to have any effect on the caching behaviour of Ubuntu (still uses all available memory to page cache my I/O). Specifically, I was trying this:
import os fd = os.open('myfile', os.O_RDONLY) # wasn't sure about the len parameter in fadvise, # so thought I just use it on the first 4GB os.posix_fadvise(fd, 0, 4000000000, os.POSIX_FADV_NOREUSE) # or DONTNEED then reading from the file with os.read() . By its very nature, I suppose posix_fadvise's effects will be OS-dependent, so my question is whether the lack of effect I'm observing is something Ubuntu-specific, or if I'm just using it in a wrong way. Any help is greatly appreciated! Best, Wolfgang -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list