Purging the Buffer Cache

Purging the Buffer Cache

[Al Peat]

  Is there any way to completely purge the buffer
cache -- not just the write requests (ala 'sync' or
'update'), but the whole thing?  Can I just call
invalidate_buffers() or destroy_buffers()?

  I know, why in the world would a person do such a
thing?  Research.  It'd be easier for me to write a
little program or add it to a module than wait for a
reboot each time I need a clean buffer cache.

  Thanks in advance,
	Al
  

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Re: Purging the Buffer Cache

[Juri Haberland]

Al Peat wrote:
> 
>   Is there any way to completely purge the buffer
> cache -- not just the write requests (ala 'sync' or
> 'update'), but the whole thing?  Can I just call
> invalidate_buffers() or destroy_buffers()?
> 
>   I know, why in the world would a person do such a
> thing?  Research.  It'd be easier for me to write a
> little program or add it to a module than wait for a
> reboot each time I need a clean buffer cache.

What about the ioctl BLKFLSBUF ?
If you are running a SuSE distrib there is already a tool called flushb
that does what you want. If not, you can download the simple tool from
http://innominate.org/~juri/flushb.tar.gz

Juri

-- 
juri.haberland@innominate.com
system engineer                                         innominate AG
clustering & security                            the linux architects
tel: +49-30-308806-45   fax: -77            http://www.innominate.com
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