Stop before RAM-swap to disk

Question

I'm troubleshooting why my R-script uses too much RAM, and need to find where it occurs so I can start looking for a solution. The problem is that whenever the RAM is exceeded, the computer starts to swap to disk followed by 20 minutes of frustrating computer-freezings, R-restart, and need for reloading everything.

Can I make the script stop before the RAM is full? I suppose a code like this is what I need. But I can't figure out the "not sure 1" and "not sure 2" functions needed to get the actual situation.

installed.RAM <- notsure1()
used.RAM <- notsure2()
stopifnot(used.RAM < 0.9*installed.RAM)

What could notsure1() and notsure2() be?

I use R on Ubuntu (with RStudio Server). 16GB of RAM.

Partially what you need at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6457290/how-to-check-the-amount-of-ram-in-r — Joachim Isaksson, Oct 24 '12 at 12:02

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 24 '12 at 12:34

1

On Linux / MAC OSX:

installed.RAM <- as.numeric(system("awk '/MemTotal/ {print $2}' /proc/meminfo",intern=TRUE));
used.RAM <- installed.RAM - as.numeric(system("awk '/MemFree/ {print $2}' /proc/meminfo", intern=TRUE));

answered Oct 24 '12 at 12:34

rinni

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Stop before RAM-swap to disk

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