iPhone Swap Space

[jiztek]

Today, my girlfriend was complaining about her iPhone software crashing left and right due to low memory issues. So I asked myself why can't we just enable swap space(screw the flash memory by the time it dies there will be a nicer phone out). Anyway the phone is running OS 3.0 jailbroken with OpenSSH, winterboard,ect. The usual things that end up on a jailbroken iphone. Basically the process is really simple, get a SFTP program like WinSCP and connect to your iphone as root. Then navigate to /System/Library/LaunchDaemons and upload com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist which can be downloaded via the link below. Next reboot the phone and enjoy having dynamic paging or swap space. The plist could be edited obviously changing the parameters for dynamic_pager for various reasons I just kept it as simple as possible. We tested by backgrounding so many applications the phone came to a crawl but we still had free memory!

Hope this helps some people, not sure if anyone would even be interested in this. But my girl friend sure is happy, which means I'll be getting happy later lol good luck iphone modding.

Found out I couldn't attach plist files.

Download link for com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

[sTrAnGe mOdS]

Today, my girlfriend was complaining about her iPhone software crashing left and right due to low memory issues. So I asked myself why can't we just enable swap space(screw the flash memory by the time it dies there will be a nicer phone out). Anyway the phone is running OS 3.0 jailbroken with OpenSSH, winterboard,ect. The usual things that end up on a jailbroken iphone. Basically the process is really simple, get a SFTP program like WinSCP and connect to your iphone as root. Then navigate to /System/Library/LaunchDaemons and upload com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist which can be downloaded via the link below. Next reboot the phone and enjoy having dynamic paging or swap space. The plist could be edited obviously changing the parameters for dynamic_pager for various reasons I just kept it as simple as possible. We tested by backgrounding so many applications the phone came to a crawl but we still had free memory!

Hope this helps some people, not sure if anyone would even be interested in this. But my girl friend sure is happy, which means I'll be getting happy later lol good luck iphone modding.

Found out I couldn't attach plist files.

Download link for com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

LOL "happy"
btw congrats on your first post!

[Ejb5oh]

DUDE!!! You rock. This mod has completely fixed my low memory issue thus far. The phone slows a bit but not bad. We will see if it completely stops the springboard resets that used to occur quite frequently.

Great posting!!!

[boxxa]

Why was swap space disabled by default? Save memory on the hard drive?

[jiztek]

I'm glad others are finding this useful. As for why this feature was originally disabled, the only thing I can think was because it does slow the phone down a bit(but not as much as randomly crashing applications). That and there is a huge arguement on the use of flash media as swap because of the large amounts of read and write operations that lower the over all life span of the flash media. But if you think like I do, the likely hood is you'll have a new model before you destroy the flash media.

[ares07]

i said this on the other thread: Nokia n900, their upcoming smartphone that runs Maemo (variety of Linux), is pretty much a twin of the 3gs in terms of hardware: same physical RAM, same processor and graphical chip. Well, besides physical RAM, a swap file of 1GB of virtual memory is listed on the specs. Do you think flash memory used by Nokia is much better than Appleīs? Donīt think so.

[lolento]

i said this on the other thread: Nokia n900, their upcoming smartphone that runs Maemo (variety of Linux), is pretty much a twin of the 3gs in terms of hardware: same physical RAM, same processor and graphical chip. Well, besides physical RAM, a swap file of 1GB of virtual memory is listed on the specs. Do you think flash memory used by Nokia is much better than Appleīs? Donīt think so.

It really depends. SLC Flash memory has typical read/write cycles for 100,000. MLC Flash memory (used on the Iphone) only has 10% of that (10,000 cycles) typically.

But I don't know what Nokia uses. They might be using MLC type as well to save space.

[ares07]

donīt forget cost issues...

[BlackWolf]

while I don't need it (3GS), I will tell some of my friends about this, it's pretty cool

[stlcaddie]

Will it hurt to do this to my 3gs or will it make it a bit better?

[EricJD]

Will it hurt to do this to my 3gs or will it make it a bit better?

I highly doubt you'll see much of a difference on a 3GS.

[WTFish]

I have installed this but nothing happens? 40mb of RAM at startup

[BlackWolf]

I have installed this but nothing happens? 40mb of RAM at startup

I guess it won't show as free RAM as the "free ram" number only shows the physical free ram, not virtual one.

[smlukkie]

hey guys..
I downloaded this, but I dont know how to use it??
can anyone tell me ????

[BlackWolf]

hey guys..
I downloaded this, but I dont know how to use it??
can anyone tell me ????

you don't. once you followed the instructions in the original post, it's already set up and everything. you don't need to do anything anymore.

[stocis]

after a week of using this, i have to say my phone in many cases has become slow, unresponsive and freezing in applications. do more have the same issue?

[Dorkington]

I'd love to hear more stories about people doing this.

I'm considering it myself.

after a week of using this, i have to say my phone in many cases has become slow, unresponsive and freezing in applications. do more have the same issue?

Are you quitting out of back grounded applications or just keeping them on indefinitely?

Does it clear up with a reboot?

[Ejb5oh]

Had to revert back to normal iPhone settings. This mod actually slowed my phone over time and caused it to operate at a crawl, while still showing about 40 mb of Ram. In essence, all it did was change the number in the available RAM section of sbsettings while crippling my phone.

[astearon]

Can anyone provide the original file ? 3.1.2 is my FW version.

[ezelthompkins]

iPhone Swap Space
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Today, my girlfriend was complaining about her iPhone software crashing left and right due to low memory issues. So I asked myself why can't we just enable swap space(screw the flash memory by the time it dies there will be a nicer phone out). Anyway the phone is running OS 3.0 jailbroken with OpenSSH, winterboard,ect. The usual things that end up on a jailbroken iphone. Basically the process is really simple, get a SFTP program like WinSCP and connect to your iphone as root. Then navigate to /System/Library/LaunchDaemons and upload com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist which can be downloaded via the link below. Next reboot the phone and enjoy having dynamic paging or swap space. The plist could be edited obviously changing the parameters for dynamic_pager for various reasons I just kept it as simple as possible. We tested by backgrounding so many applications the phone came to a crawl but we still had free memory!

Hope this helps some people, not sure if anyone would even be interested in this. But my girl friend sure is happy, which means I'll be getting happy later lol good luck iphone modding.

Where did you get the plist file from? Did you write the file? Can you explain what the various keys and settings are and if there are options for them?

Here is the contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>Label</key>
	<string>com.apple.dynamic_pager</string>
	<key>OnDemand</key>
	<false/>
	<key>ProgramArguments</key>
	<array>
		<string>/sbin/dynamic_pager</string>
		<string>-F</string>
		<string>/private/var/vm/iphone_swap</string>
	</array>
	<key>RunAtLoad</key>
	<true/>
</dict>
</plist>