[Om2008.12] Adding swap space can stop app crashes

[Helge Hafting]

Nick Van Fossen wrote:
> Just as a helpful note, adding swap space seems to help against 
> application crashes.  I've always had issues with
> tangoGPS and the various webbrower apps crashing.  Looking into it a 
> little more I notice that this was occurring when the
> puny 128MB of memory was getting filled up.  So, I added a swap file 
> onto my microSD card and have had these problems
> practically clear up.  Anyone else had any similar experiences?  If this 
> is a true fix this should probably go onto the wiki. 

I have a 128MB swap partition on the microsd. This works fine, currently
using 10M of swap with 3 days of uptime. So I currently have 10M more 
available for cache and programs than I otherwise might.

Using some swap may speed up stuff as well. When memory gets tight,
linux have a choice between swapping out little-used data, throwing
away some file cache, or throwing out stuff that can be reloaded
(such as the code in your binaries.)

Without swap, linux can only throw out file cache and binaries. Even
if there is some really old unused data around.  Data cannot be 
discarded unless there is somewhere to put it - i.e. the swap partition.

Helge Hafting