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Re: Preventing swapping (high memory use)

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg99881] Re: Preventing swapping (high memory use)
• From: "Dr. David Kirkby" <david.kirkby at onetel.net>
• Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 02:31:22 -0400 (EDT)
• References: <gum0f5$q4v$1@smc.vnet.net>

Szabolcs Horvát wrote:
> Sometimes I don't realize how much memory a computation would take up 
> (or I simply make a mistake, and start a calculation that requires too 
> much memory), and my computer starts swapping.
> 
> This makes Mathematica (and often the OS too) completely unresponsive 
> for a long time.  In this case my only hope is that in spite of the 
> system unresponsiveness I can manage to kill the kernel, so that I can 
> at least save the notebook ...
> 
> Is there any way to prevent swapping, for example by putting a cap on 
> the kernel's memory use?  Even if the kernel just quits when it runs out 
> of memory, I still have the notebook.  But if the computer gets so 
> unresponsive that I have to restart it, then I lose the notebook too, 
> which is a much more serious loss ...
> 
> I tried using MemoryConstrained (with $Pre), but it seems to constrain 
> only the memory used by current computation, not the full kernel memory use.
> 
> 
> To summarize:  I'm simply looking for a way to prevent the computer from 
> locking up because of excessive swapping.
> 

What OS ?