[P1] To Partition or...! Virtual Memory

[Kim Gammelg å rd]

I had this problem some weeks ago, when I had a 5-10 of programs running on
my 320 MB iBook with less than a GB of free space on my  main partition. The
machine slowed down to a crawl as the VM grabbed more and more(I was running
a bad beta version of something with a memory leak), and although I was able
to switch apps using the mouse, the iBook was so slow responding, that I
could not even ssh into it from my iMac, as I kept getting timeouts. The
solution was to quit a couple of apps using ctrl-clicking in the Dock (I
went for Safari and iCab first, as I know that the browsers eat far more
memory, as they keep changing their window content). I was not able to get
the quitting window up using cmd-alt-esc, as this obviously demanded more
memory than there was available, just to draw that window. After quitting a
few apps, everything went alright, and I was able to have my iBook running
for almost three weeks without any problems, not even loosing any
preferences, AFAIK.

Cheers,

Kim

On 02/06/03 9:56, "Richard McKay" <richard.mckay1 at virgin.net> wrote:

> Just out of curiosity...has anyone tried /know what happens when there is
> only the absolute minimum RAM (taken removable RAM out) and filled (no doubt
> this would have to be done on purpose and then done a defragmentation and
> filled again to ensure total disk space usage) the drive...then ran whatever
> programs would start and tried switching or using large items copied to the
> clipboard? As VM is never off, what happens? There would be no place to
> write the info to...does this cause the OS to crash or would it simply
> refuse to allow the extra RAM action to be carried out...
> 
> Is this documented somewhere?