Clearing Cache/Buffers for benchmarking?

[Myles Uyema]

On 2.4 kernels there exist /proc/sys/vm/buffermem and
/proc/sys/vm/pagecache.  Both have three fields: min, borrow, max
percentage of total memory.

I'm not sure how honorable these settings are, but my guess is:
echo 0 0 0 > /proc/sys/vm/buffermem
echo 0 0 0 > /proc/sys/vm/pagecache

You might want to remember their default settings before you overwrite
them with 0.  It doesn't immediate clear my buffer/cache memory when I
do this, however.

On Wed, 16 May 2001, Warren Togami wrote:

> Anyone know how to force clear the memory buffers/cache (without rebooting)
> for the purpose of accurate benchmarking?  I need a way of "resetting" most
> of the environment that matters between compiler benchmark runs.