Daily Archives: January 7, 2013

Not so fast on the ChromeOS swap file…at least on the ARM ChromeBook

I first thought I’d stumbled upon a way to turn on the virtual memory on my ChromeBook, but as I’ve looked at it and read about it, this does not yet work on the ARM version of ChromeOS on my ChromeBook. However, it’s been a useful exercise, as I’ve read up on a number of things. This trick does work on non-ARM ChromeOS, and may be useful on a CR-48! I’ll have to wait on mine. A useful thing in tracking memory utilization and page discards (the main symptom of low memory) is found on the chrome://discards URL. It will show you basic memory stats plus the count of discards since the last reboot. My initial euphoria about memory was caused by rebooting after making the attempt at the swap setting. I’d not realized how much difference rebooting made in reducing the page discard rate.

So, those with Samsung ARM ChromeBooks will have to wait, but if you start seeing a lot of page discards (and confirmed with the discard URL), just reboot (only a few seconds on Chrome!) and it will be much better…