Going off piste to linux-mm.org, I found this: http://linux-mm.org/Drop_Caches
This is exactly what I was thinking should be done automatically. I went from 66% cache and not being able to run programs, to 5% cache and being able to carry on. The bug is that this doesn't happen automatically, and hasn't ever AFAICR. -- OS Disk cache not reclaimed on demand for programs https://launchpad.net/bugs/88408 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
